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97 Va. L. Rev. Brief 1 (2011)

handle is hein.journals/inbrf97 and id is 1 raw text is: VIRGINIA LAW REVIEW
IN BRIEF

VOLUME 97                 MARCH 20,2011                  PAGES 1-12
RESPONSE
MASSIVE HARD DRIVES, GENERAL WARRANTS, AND THE POWER
OF MAGISTRATE JUDGES
Paul Ohm*
M OST legal scholars who write at the intersection of technology
and the Fourth Amendment spend much of their time building
upon Professor Orin Kerr's many clear and insightful articles, and I
am no exception. It is thus with great respect and deference that I
explain what Professor Kerr gets wrong in his latest article, Ex Ante
Regulation of Computer Search and Seizure.1
In Ex Ante Regulation, Professor Kerr tries to disrupt a trend
emerging from the lower federal courts: the imposition by magis-
trate judges of limits on what the police can do with a search war-
rant for digital evidence stored on computer hard drives. These
judges have tried to impose a diverse set of requirements and re-
strictions on these warrants-catalogued by Professor Kerr-such
as limits on how long the police can retain a computer and what
they can do when they examine its hard drive.2
*Associate Professor, University of Colorado Law School. I thank Jennifer Granick,
Lee Tien, Blake Reid, and Magistrate Judge Stephen Smith for their comments and
Janna Fischer and Nicole Friess for their research assistance. My thoughts about the
Comprehensive Drug Testing decision were shaped through earlier conversations with
Nicole Friess, Bert Lao, Devin Loojien, Jennifer Lynch, and Jason Wu. Finally, I thank
Orin Kerr, my mentor and friend, for his comments and for giving me plenty to write
about.
196 Va. L. Rev. 1241 (2010).
2 Id. at 1248-60.

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