Am I right that the Ninth Circuit's Fourth Amendment decision in United States v. Comprehensive Drug Testing has rendered every computer search warrant that has ever been obtained — and every offsite search — unconstitutional? I've been working in this area for over a decade, and I have never heard of a case that satisfies the Ninth Circuit's new procedural standards.

  I suppose it's possible that the Ninth Circuit will create a new retroactivity jurisprudence to go along with its new Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. If so, the Ninth Circuit might hold that its new rules don't apply to past warrants or past searches that have occurred. But unless or until it does, I would think that every criminal case in the Ninth Circuit with a search warrant involving computers has just been given a new suppression issue: None of the cases will have followed the protocols that the Ninth Circuit just said the Fourth Amendment requires, as no one could have predicted these new protocols.

  Or perhaps the Ninth Circuit will conclude that there is no suppression remedy for past searches that violated the new requirements? This is really new territory, so it will be interesting to see how it plays out. I suspect we'll find out soon, as there are a lot of these cases.