Federal judge holds warrant for individual emails permits law enforcement to seize entire email account

The New York Law Journal reports that a federal judge has found that the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit law enforcement officials from seizing and reviewing an email account after the execution of the initial search. The article states:

"In the case of electronic evidence, which typically consists of enormous amounts of undifferentiated information and documents, courts have recognized that a search for documents or files responsive to a warrant cannot possibly be accomplished during an on-site search," [U.S. District Magistrate for the Southern District of New York Gabrial Gorenstein] said.

 

So courts have developed a more flexible approach compared to on-site searches and "routinely" allow the seizure of entire hard drives, he said, and that's why the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure were amended in 2009 [Rule 41(e)(2)(A)] to allow a warrant that "authorizes a later review of the media or information." Under the amended rule, the time for executing the warrant "refers to the seizure or on-site copying of the media or information, and not to any later off-site copying or review."

 

Gorenstein also said in June the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held in United States v. Ganias, 2014 WL 2722618, that "the creation of mirror images for off-site review is constitutionally permissible in most instances, even if wholesale removal of tangible papers would not be."

 

Gorenstein said he could "perceive no constitutionally significant difference between searches of hard drives and email accounts.