United States v. Caraher, No. 18-511 (2d Cir. August 25, 2020)(Hall, joined by Lynch and Menashi), involved the government’s takeover and operation of the child pornography website “Playpen” for two weeks so that it could track visitors to the site, identify their identities and locations, and search their computers. The FBI obtained a warrant allowing them to search “activating computers” of “any user or administrator who logs into the Playpen website by entering a username and password.” Caraher was such a visitor and agents located him and searched his computer. The district court held that the warrant violated Fed. Rule Crim P. 41(b) and 28 U.S.C. 636(a) but applied the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule.
The Court followed its prior decision in United States v. Eldred, 933 F.3d 110, 111 (2d Cir. 2019), addressing the same warrant and holding that, even if the search and the …