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I would think "no expectation of privacy" implies that a computer is a public space. Wouldn't that make it difficult to say that an access was unauthorized?

• greenyoda 10y ago
  The decision talks about the expectations of privacy of criminal defendants, and weighs the interests of privacy against the interests of law enforcement. The information that that the government malware obtained in this case was metadata, like IP addresses. The decision cites precedents which say that since the user's IP address is already shared with third parties (e.g., ISPs and any web site that the person goes to), it's not private information. Presumably, once the government got the IP addresses, it correlated them with ISPs' records and obtained warrants to physically seize the computers and search them for child porn. In my opinion this is an overreach on the part of the government, but it doesn't claim that a private computer is a public space, or even that the government can read files on people's computers without a warrant.