A Washington state Court of Appeals has ruled this week that police do not need a warrant to access and search the contents of an employee’s office-owned PC. All that is needed is the employer’s permission. This in the case of an employee who used his work PC to access child pornography.

Now, on first blush this may seem like a no-brainer. Warrantless searches happen, and are upheld, all the time, if the owner gives permission. Indeed, one of the first things which one learns in evidence in law school is the “plain view” doctrine, which holds that if the police knock on your door, and you let them in, anything which they observe which is in plain view is fair game despite the lack of a warrant, and even if you didn’t give them explicit permission to observe that thing (we’ll leave for the non the question of what constitutes permission, and when coercion negates alleged “permisson”).

Next in line is the permitted search, where something which is not in plain view can still be discovered and considered admissible evidence without a warrant if the owner has given permission for the search.

It seems natural to extend this to the ‘premises’ of the contents of a PC if… [Continued…]