Foreword.

On April 5, 2007, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals handed down its opinion in United States v. Heckencamp. (1) A unanimous three-judge panel held that a warrantless remote search of files on a student's personal computer by a university network administrator was justified under the special needs exception to the Fourth Amendment, as "the administrator reasonably believed the computer had been used to gain unauthorized access to confidential records on a university computer." (2) The Heekencamp case is certainly noteworthy in that it adds an important nuance to the scope of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence as applied to the search of computer files. But, perhaps the case is more important in that it--and others like it--represent the continual evolution of the law, specifically criminal law, alongside changes in technology.

The Framers ratified the Fourth Amendment in 1791--20 years after the chess-playing "Turk" beguiled audiences across Europe and 85 years before Alexander Graham Bell beckoned "Mr. Watson" with the first telephone--unable to imagine that box of wires and flowing electrons on a desktop could store more information than a monumental library or that such information could be sent to another person across the globe almost instantaneously. And yet today, courts and policy-makers are called upon to apply legal doctrines like the Fourth Amendment and myriad others to the questions...