US police do not need a search warrant to examine an employee’s computer for incriminating files, a Washington state appeals court has ruled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
All that is necessary is the permission of the business that owns the computer, the appeals court said in a 3-0 decision last week.<\/p>\n
In April 2003, when Jack Leck briefly worked at a not-for-profit organisation called the World Peace Ambassadors, he allegedly used an office computer to do Web searches for pre-teen boys and girls and participate in related mailing lists from his Hotmail account.<\/p>\n
When police showed up with some questions, the not-for-profit group permitted that computer to be seized without a warrant.<\/p>\n
Leck was charged with 50 counts of possessing child pornography and sentenced to four years in prison.<\/p>\n
He claimed the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab’s seizure and search of the computer without a warrant was illegal because it violated his Fourth Amendment right to privacy.<\/p>\n
The Washington state Supreme Court has authorised searches without a warrant as long as the lawful owner of the property gives consent voluntarily, the court noted.<\/p>\n
“Leck did not share equal authority with [the nonprofit’s director] over the WPA office or computer, thus, Leck’s consent to the state’s search was not necessary,” wrote Judge Marywave Van Deren.<\/p>\n
The court upheld Leck’s conviction and sentence.<\/p>\n
http:\/\/news.zdnet.co.uk\/business\/employment\/0,39020648,39183217,00.htm<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=610"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3097,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610\/revisions\/3097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}