Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Fourth Amendment

Criminal Law

: Fourth Amendment

New law review article: "Digitizing the Fourth Amendment: Limiting the Private Search Exception in Computer Investigations"

By John Wesley Hall, Jr.

Benjamin Holley, Digitizing the Fourth Amendment: Limiting the Private Search Exception in Computer Investigations, 96 Va. L. Rev. 677 (2010) Abstract SSRN: The “Private Search” exception to the Fourth Amendment allows law enforcement officers to re-create, without a warrant, a search conducted by a private individual, provided two conditions are met. First, the individual may not act at the behest of the government (the agency prong) and second, officers may not search beyond what was already discovered by the private searcher (the scope prong). The exception is premised on the theory that the private searcher destroyed whatever expectation of privacy the suspect had in his information, thereby eliminating any Fourth Amendment protection...continue to full post

Full post as published by Fourth Amendment on March 10, 2011 (boomark / email).