Second Circuit Says Government Can't Seize Electronic Data Now, Keep It Forever, And Search It Later

When law enforcement officials execute warrants for electronic data, they usually create a mirror image of hard drives and other electronic storage media. In recent years, it has become more common for law enforcement to keep every bit and byte they obtain from doing so. But the Second Circuit's June 17 opinion in United States v. Ganias should put a stop to this practice, thanks to the successful advocacy of Day Pitney's Stanley A. Twardy Jr., Daniel E. Wenner and John W. Cerreta.

In Ganias, federal agents obtained a search warrant to search the computers of Stavros Ganias, a CPA, for evidence regarding purported wrongdoing by an accounting client. Instead of taking Ganias's computers, the agents mirror-imaged three hard drives, which included large quantities of data outside the warrant's scope. Twenty-three months later, when the agents decided to pursue an investigation of Ganias himself, they obtained a new search warrant and used it to search those mirror