> The court’s holding hinged on four differences between manual and forensic searches: (1) in a manual search, a person does the searching, not a machine; (2) a manual search’s breadth depends on the officer’s time and energy, while forensic searches are comprehensive; (3) manual searches reveal only what a user can typically access, while forensic searches can uncover deleted files, cached fragments, metadata, and more; and (4) manual searches are subject to an officer’s fading memory or imperfect notes, while forensic searches create a permanent copy.> But in identifying these technical differences, the court never explains why they justify a lower standard for manual searches.
Their observations precisely describe the situation the authors of the constitution would expect of every search (barring consideration of concepts foreign to them), when they included the fourth amendment. I would be very interested to hear the court's justification, though I suppose the absence of such speaks for itself.
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