Should State Law Enforcement Officials Be Required to Develop and Implement Minimization Protocols to Govern the Execution of Digital Search Warrants?

摘要

Molina, Martinez, Dorelas, Perkins, Keown, and Holley exemplify the courts' wrestling with issues of transposing Fourth Amendment and Article 14 protections in digital contexts. Let us be clear about what we are not saying. We are not suggesting that the traditional warrant requirements of probable cause, scope, and particularity that historically have underpinned the review of search warrants, including warrants for digital evidence, cannot adequately protect against unlawful seizures and searches in certain circumstances. Rather, we are suggesting that courts will continue to struggle to incorporate electronic search and seizure law into the existing paradigm of Fourth Amendment and Article 14 reasonableness absent the development and widespread implementation of minimization protocols to govern the execution of such search warrants. Their time, we believe, is coming.