Government-mandated scanning requirements on people's printers for supposedly illegal guns would be similarly unconstitutional to government-mandated scanning r

Government-mandated scanning requirements on people's printers for supposedly illegal guns would be similarly unconstitutional to government-mandated scanning requirements on people's phones for CSAM. I happened to remember reading about how the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement would have ruined EARN IT Act's implementation had it passed [1]: > When a private entity conducts a search because the government wants it to, not primarily on its own initiative, then the otherwise-private entity becomes an agent of the government with respect to the search. (This is a simplistic summary of “government agent” jurisprudence; for details, see the Kosseff paper.) And government searches typically require a warrant to be reasonable. Without one, whatever evidence the search turns up can be suppressed in court under the so-called exclusionary rule because it was obtained unconstitutionally. If that evidence led to additional evidence, that’ll be excluded too, because it’s “the fruit of the poisonous tree.” > Fourth Amendment government agency doctrine is why lawmakers and law enforcement must tread very carefully when it comes to CSAM scanning online. Many online service providers already choose voluntarily to scan all (unencrypted) content uploaded to their services, using tools such as PhotoDNA. But it must be a voluntary choice, not one induced by government pressure. (Hence the disclaimer in the federal law requiring providers to report CSAM on their services that they know about, which makes clear that they do not have to go looking for it.) If the provider counts as a government agent, then its CSAM scans constitute warrantless mass surveillance. Whatever CSAM they find could get thrown out in court should a user thus ensnared raise a Fourth Amendment challenge during a resulting prosecution. But that’s often a key piece of evidence in CSAM prosecutions; without it, it’s harder to convict the accused. In short, government pressure to scan for CSAM risks letting offenders off the hook. [1] Ignoring EARN IT's Fourth Amendment Problem Won’t Make It Go Away - https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2022/03/ignoring-earn-its-fourth-amendment-problem-wont-make-it-go-away/ https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2022/03/ignoring-earn-its...