{"id":9647,"date":"2013-10-24T11:40:25","date_gmt":"2013-10-24T07:03:16","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-10-24T07:03:16","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=9647","title":{"rendered":"D.Idaho: TRO granted to seize and search computer of self-proclaimed \u201chacker\u201d in copyright infringement"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a civil software copyright infringement case, the U.S. District Court for Idaho issued a TRO authorized seizure of a computer of a self-identified \u201chacker\u201d for a private search where he publicly proclaimed that he was going to release a knock-off infringing program. The burden to get a TRO is high, and the burden to authorize ex parte seizure of a computer is extraordinary, but the plaintiffs met the burden here. Battelle Energy Alliance, LLC v. Southfork Security, Inc.<\/a>, 4:13-cv-00442-BLW (D. Idaho October 15, 2013):<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Court has struggled over the issue of allowing the copying of the hard drive. This is a serious invasion of privacy and is certainly not a standard remedy, as the discussion of the case law above demonstrates. The tipping point for the Court comes from evidence that the defendants \u2013 in their own words \u2013 are hackers. By labeling themselves this way, they have essentially announced that they have the necessary computer skills and intent to simultaneously release the code publicly and conceal their role in that act. And concealment likely involves the destruction of evidence on the hard drive of Thuen\u2019s computer. For these reasons, the Court finds this is one of the very rare cases that justifies seizure and copying of the hard drive.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Note: I generally don’t cover civil cases in the U.S. District Courts because there isn’t enough time to get them all, so I usually only consider appeals. This, however, is interesting because there are Fourth Amendment implications to this extraordinary seizure, and the Fourth Amendment isn’t cited. It could and likely should have been. Even though this is a \u201cprivate search,\u201d isn\u2019t seeking sanction from a federal court government action implicating the Fourth Amendment? What about the potential implications of criminal copyright infringement? Maybe too nebulous, and are they even real? That\u2019s not the point to me: If a court has authorized a seizure and search of property, isn\u2019t the Fourth Amendment involved no matter who is doing the searching? Therefore, considering, say, a parallel of an administrative search, has some form of \u201cprobable cause\u201d for the action been shown? Here, based on the record made, I\u2019d say yes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"pingsdone","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9647\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}