United States vs. Ziegler

The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, protecting "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,” guards against government privacy invasions, and, as with other strands of privacy law, consent has long played a significant role (Jollis, 2013, p. 1694).

One of the most pressing challenges facing the legal world today is the application of constitutional law to rapidly evolving technology — particularly the application of the Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable search and seizure to the digital frontier. The Fourth Amendment was drafted primarily with physical property in mind, to protect against general warrants “not limited in scope and application.” When executing warrants today, the standard approach in seizing electronic data is the creation of an identical read-only copy of the computer’s contents called a forensic mirror image (Fourth Amendment--Search and Seizure and Evidence Retention--Second Circuit creates a potential "Right to Deletion" of Imaged Hard Drives, 2014).

In the case of United States of America vs. Ziegler, Jeffrey Ziegler was an Internet Technology (IT) employee with Frontline, an Internet company that processed online payments, located in Bozeman, Montana. On January 30, 2001, Anthony Cochenour, the owner of the company and another employee, contacted the FBI to report Mr. Ziegler was accessing child pornography on the company’s computer. Agent James A. Kennedy, Jr began an investigation by speaking with Frontline’s IT administrator, John Softich, whose responsibility was to monitor the internet activities of the employees (United States v. Zielger, 2007).

During the interview, Softich confirmed Cochenour's report that a Frontline employee had accessed child pornography via the Internet.   Softich also reported that he had personally viewed the sites and confirmed that they depicted “very, very young girls in various stages of...