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4th Amendment Essay

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In the United States, the Constitution guarantees its citizens certain rights. The Constitution is also the basis of many processes used in the criminal justice system. This essay will provide the case law that would allow the search of the suspect’s office computer, as well as detail the investigative technique used to trace the instant message communication. The Fourth Amendment limits the power and authority of law enforcement agencies when securing people and/or their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures (Peak, 2012, p. 289). This limitation of power and authority guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment includes computers, which are often used in the commission of a crime (“Fourth Amendment,” …show more content…

An example of case law that is applicable to this case is Hanson v First Nat’l Bank. In this case, Kenneth Hanson was being sued for fraud based on information obtained from emails that he shared with his attorney on his workplace computer (Miller, 2011). In its decision, the Supreme Court ruled that a person does not have a right to privacy to confidential information or materials that are saved on a workplace computer’s hard drive (Miller, 2011). As a result, this allows investigators to search the suspect’s office computer to retrieve pertinent information regarding the terrorist …show more content…

An example of a self-forensic tool used for digital extraction is Evidence Center by Belkasoft (Lun, 2012). Evidence Center can be used by investigators with evidence extraction of “messenger history profile, allocated disk space, unallocated disk space, RAM, Pagefile and Hibernation file” (Lun, 2012). When using this program, investigators are able to store all extracted evidence from the instant messenger into a database, which can be used to further analyze the data (Lun, 2012). However, this program isn’t successful in retrieving every type of information, such as pictures or videos (Lun, 2012). As a result, investigators would need to use an additional program while tracing the instant message

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