A huge win for computer privacy

A very important decision has come out for those involved in computer forensic's, law enforcement and computer privacy. The Ninth Circuit has ruled that search warrants for electronic files must be specific and segregation and redaction must be done by specialized personnel or a third party. Those people conducting the search are not allowed to confiscate files not specified in the warrant and the investigating authorities are not allowed to conduct the search themselves, being only privy to files relating to their case.

For example, in the past if the Government suspected someone of using your email server for illegal activities they could image the whole server and every file on that image would fall under the plain sight rule, meaning if it's there then it's there in plain sight. They would be allowed to look at your email, even though it is unrelated to their investigation because it is "in plain sight". With this new ruling however they would only be allowed to confiscate and examine email that is the subject of their investigation and would be required to leave any other email untouched on the server. This protection of privacy is the object of this extraordinary opinion by Chief Judge Kozinski

The advent of fast, cheap networking has made it possible to store information at remote third-party locations, where it is intermingled with that of other users. For example, many people no longer keep their email primarily on their personal computer, and instead use a web-based email provider, which stores their messages along with billions of messages from and to millions of other people. Similar services exist for photographs, slide shows, computer code, and many other types of data. As a result, people now have personal data that are stored with that of innumerable strangers. Seizure of, for example, Google’s email servers to look for a few incriminating messages could jeopardize the privacy of millions.

You can read the full opinion in pdf format here (pdf).