Archive | Ex Ante Warrant Restrictions

As regular readers know, I have written at length about ex ante search restrictions on computer warrants. As I explained in a 2010 article in the Virginia Law Review, these restrictions are conditions of how a warrant is executed that some magistrate judges have begun to impose in cases involving searches of a computer. I […]

I have blogged a few times about the significant Vermont Supreme Court case on ex ante search restrictions for computer warrants, In re Appeal of Application for Search Warrant. For prior posts, see here and here. Last week, Vermont filed a petition for certiorari in this case. I have posted a copy of the cert […]

I have blogged often about the ex ante search restrictions on computer search warrants. In such cases, the government applies for a warrant to search a computer, and the magistrate judge concludes the warrant application satisfies the Fourth Amendment’s requirements of probable cause and particularity. Nonetheless, the judge is worried that the subsequent execution of […]

In a recent article, Ex Ante Regulation of Computer Search and Seizure, 96 Va. L. Rev. 1241 (2010), I wrote about the relatively new practice some magistrate judges have adopted of imposing ex ante restrictions on the scope of computer warrants that control how and when the computer is analyzed after it is retrieved from […]

As regular readers know, I’m very interested in the new practice some magistrate judges have adopted of conditioning computer warrants on ex ante restrictions that they themselves create and attempt to impose on law enforcement. A district judge recently decided a new case on the role of the restrictions that in my view demonstrates why […]

Maybe it’s just me, but that seemed kind of interesting: See pages 10-11 in this brief recently filed in the Vermont Supreme Court’s pending case on ex ante search warrant restrictions, which quotes from this post. I hope to have some substantive comments posted about the second round of briefing soon, but for now was […]

The comment thread to yesterday’s post on ex ante restrictions for computer warrants led to some interesting questions, and it also suggested that it might be helpful to explain the historical role of warrants, the particularity requirement, and magistrates, in order to understand how ex ante restrictions strongly depart from the historical norm. So here’s […]

I’ve blogged before about the fascinating and important issue of whether magistrate judges have the power to impose ex ante restrictions on how computer searches will be executed as a condition of issuing warrants to search computers. As regular readers know, my view is that they don’t: I explained why in my recent article, Ex […]

In a recent article, Ex Ante Regulation of Computer Search and Seizure, 96 Va. L. Rev. 1241 (2010), I pointed out a newly emerging practice of some federal magistrate judges in computer search cases. When the government applies for warrants to search for and seize computers, some judges are rejecting the applications — even when […]