CDT, EFF, New America File Amicus Brief Backing Limits on Government Searches of Copied Hard Drives

Once the government effectuates a warrant by copying a computer hard drive, “it should dispose of the information irrelevant to the crime for which the warrant was issued,” said the Center for Democracy & Technology and five nonprofit advocacy organizations in an amicus brief filed Wednesday with the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a news release said. The brief, filed in the U.S. v. Ganias case by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), ACLU of Connecticut, the Brennan Center, Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Open Technology Institute of the New America Foundation, said law enforcement shouldn't be able to hold copied information indefinitely or have the ability to search the information indefinitely into the future in relation to unrelated crimes, the release said. In the case, the government copied the entire contents of Stavros Ganias’ computer hard drive as part of an Army investigation of improper conduct by a company called Industrial Property Management (IPM), the release said. Ganias’ was IPM’s accountant and the irrelevant data copied from the computers was not destroyed but was retained and searched with a new warrant by IRS investigators 18 months later for “unrelated accounting irregularities,” the release said. CDT Freedom, Security and Technology Project Director Greg Nojeim said: “If the content irrelevant to the warrant is retained indefinitely, it means an individual will be forced to live under a cloud of suspicion forever.” It’s a violation of the Fourth Amendment, which covers searches and seizures, to seize a computer to investigate one crime and then hold irrelevant information on the chance it could be useful later, he said.