Search and Seizure — private searches — computers

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United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Criminal

Search and Seizure — private searches — computers

A search of any material on a computer disk is valid if the private party who conducted the initial search had viewed at least one file on the disk.

“We find the Fifth Circuit’s holding in Runyan to be persuasive, and we adopt it. As the Fifth Circuit reasoned, their holding is sensible because it preserves the competing objectives underlying the Fourth Amendment’s protections against warrantless police searches. A defendant’s expectation of privacy with respect to a container unopened by the private searchers is preserved unless the defendant’s expectation of privacy in the contents of the container has already been frustrated because the contents were rendered obvious by the private search. Moreover, this rule discourages police from going on ‘fishing expeditions’ by opening closed containers. Id. at 463-64. We find that Runyan’s holding strikes the proper balance between the legitimate expectation of privacy an individual retains in the contents of his digital media storage devices after a private search has been conducted and the ‘additional invasions of privacy by the government agent’ that ‘must be tested by the degree to which they exceeded the scope of the private search.’ Jacobsen, 466 U.S. at 115.”

Affirmed.

11-3502 Rann v. Atchinson

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois, Herndon, J., Manion, J.