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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.