While obviously Orin Kerr has far more background on these subjects than I do, I don't agree with his reasoning here. The fourth amendment requires police to ge

While obviously Orin Kerr has far more background on these subjects than I do, I don't agree with his reasoning here. The fourth amendment requires police to get a warrant from a judge before performing a search and seizure[1]. The judge's job is to ensure the warrant application has ample justification and the scope of the search is reasonable by fourth amendment standards, and may put limits on this search (ex ante restrictions) as necessary to bound the scope to what is reasonable. The police have no authority to perform a search beyond what the warrant allows[1]. If they think the warrant is unnecessarily restrictive, the solution is to appeal. It is not acceptable to just ignore the restrictions because they don't agree with the judge. The police should be held accountable for going beyond the scope of a warrant even if a broader warrant that included their activities would have been a reasonable search. So in this case, it would have been completely reasonable for the judge to authorize the police to spend as much time as they needed to crack the password, mirror the device, and then come back for another warrant to search the contents. But the judge's warrant didn't authorize that, and the evidence should be discarded for going beyond the scope of the warrant. [1] Beyond the normal exemptions that allow warrant-less searches.