Yahoo, Facebook Searches of Accounts Not Seizure by Government

The evidence uncovered by Yahoo and Facebook and used to convict a defendant of child exploitation wasn’t collected at the behest of the government and therefore was properly used against the defendant at trial, the Ninth Circuit said.

Along the way, the court said that internet content preservation at the request of the government wasn’t a seizure under the Fourth Amendment.

Carsten Rosenow argued that the two companies were acting as government agents under the Stored Communications Act and the Protect Our Children Act. He also said that the government was sufficiently involved in the searches to trigger Fourth Amendment ...