ArsTechnica brings us an article that will make anyone who enjoys freedom sick to your stomach. A person who was subject to an investigation had their computer and hard drive confiscated. At that time the government made a copy of said drive, obviously for evidence in the first case/investigation. They then used that copy two years later to build a separate case against them and that drive provided the damming evidence.
Now I get it, you may be saying well this person is a prior bad actor. They are a criminal and do not have the rights of us that aren’t. But this shouldn’t matter. This is akin to the government at one time getting a search warrant for your house, to investigate one case, but retaining a key and the right to come back later and have a look around for “other violations.”
Add further the fact that if you say, are crossing an international border, the government can search and seize your device. At that time they could make a clone of said drive and keep and mine the data for either a crime. What about if they keep the data and then try to argue you committed a crime prior to it becoming a crime?
I don’t seem to understand that as we citizens have made the governments job easier going all digital, they seem to need to change the rules that existed for paper and hard evidence. Just because it is now easier to store data/evidence doesn’t mean we should.
And what is the solution now? Do you encrypt and silo all of your data? Sure, there are those that will say if you are doing nothing wrong, what do you have to hide. But in a free society I shouldn’t have to concern myself with these things. Sadly with the way that warrants are handed out nowadays you may be involved in a case that you had no clue was coming. The rest of your data should not and never be used against you.
Link: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/05/feds-can-keep-your-hard-drives-indefinitely-and-search-them-too/