That precedent will also need to be tested. Taking someone's equipment, especially when devices are becoming more and more concentrated, is beyond reasonable search of focused investigations. Think about it; when you take someone's laptop, tablet, and smartphone, you are also taking their camera, filing cabinet, scanner, copier, mailbox, picture frames, flashlight, catalog, telephone, gaming console, accounting records, financial documents, pens, wallet, cash money, watches, personal records and records, random people's belongings, keys, notebooks, drafting table, ... and on and on.
What the government in this case, just like all similar cases is doing is essentially as if the FBI came busing into your house and had goons investigating and randomly milling around your house continuously for months if not years. It, at least in the USA, does not hold up against Constitutional protections of reasonable search and seizure. I just don't think it has been tested thoroughly enough.
There is a reason you are not legally just allowed to seal off and load up someone's house, office, business, and cars and keep them hostage indefinitely because some random person may have committed a crime on your property. The precedent for physical evidence has been set and it equally applies to the digital, if tested properly, whether gov't or their corrupt henchmen can wrap their puny, deranged, atrophied, and primitive minds around it or not. Why don't we just go back to the "BAD.....SMASH!" system of legal jurisprudence if blanket taking of everything plus the kitchen sink is ok.
What the government in this case, just like all similar cases is doing is essentially as if the FBI came busing into your house and had goons investigating and randomly milling around your house continuously for months if not years. It, at least in the USA, does not hold up against Constitutional protections of reasonable search and seizure. I just don't think it has been tested thoroughly enough.
There is a reason you are not legally just allowed to seal off and load up someone's house, office, business, and cars and keep them hostage indefinitely because some random person may have committed a crime on your property. The precedent for physical evidence has been set and it equally applies to the digital, if tested properly, whether gov't or their corrupt henchmen can wrap their puny, deranged, atrophied, and primitive minds around it or not. Why don't we just go back to the "BAD.....SMASH!" system of legal jurisprudence if blanket taking of everything plus the kitchen sink is ok.