Fourth Amendment Essay

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Consent—A Common Fourth Amendment Exception The Constitution of the United States of America protects people’s rights because it limits the power of government against its people. Those rights guaranteed in the Constitution are better known as the Bill of Rights. Within these rights, the Fourth Amendment protects “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable search and seizures […]” (Knetzger & Muraski, 2008). According to the Fourth Amendment, a search warrant must be issued before a search and seizure takes place. However, consent for lawful search is one of the most common exceptions to the search warrant requirement. When law enforcement authorities need to search a computer or any other electronic media, consent must be given. Consent is the agreement to search with “knowingly and voluntarily authority to do so” (Knetzger & Muraski, 2008). However, sometimes there are consent issues when a computer is sharing two users with different user‘s ID and password. In this scenario, if consent is given to search a computer; l...

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