Quiz 1 Information

The quiz will be given in class on October 06 (Thursday). The quiz will be open-note (but not open-book); I will audit your notes while you take the quiz. Expect this process to take less than five minutes. I will also give you feedback about your class participation grade during this time.

The quiz will primarily cover 4A and CFAA: the material from the text and other assigned readings through October 04.

The quiz will be written to take about thirty minutes, but you will be given about sixty. It will not be the whole class meeting; we will cover new material on Tor before the quiz, but that material will not be on the quiz.

The quiz will consist of several short answer questions and a few longer-form questions. Examples of the former include:

• What does the Katz test determine? State each prong of the test in full (or for partial credit, just its name).
• What details, if any, are required when requesting a search warrant from a court?
• To whom (that is, what classes of people) does the 4A apply?
• What does it mean for an individual to “operate under color of law”?
• What are the primary action(s) prohibited by 18 U.S.C. §1030, also known as the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA)?

Two examples of longer-form questions follow:

• Imagine a criminal trial where it becomes clear that evidence was acquired by a government agent in an unwarranted search or seizure.

  • List four exceptional circumstances under which such evidence is admissible despite the lack of warrant.
  • What is the typical remedy applied by courts when no such exceptional circumstance applies?

• Imagine the following hypothetical: UMass Police are investigating a report of a stolen laptop in a dormitory on campus. Police officers arrive at a resident’s room, and upon knocking and talking, are given consent by the one resident in the room to enter and look around. Spotting a cell phone on the desk, they ask the student if they can examine it. The resident then retracts his consent once he realizes the officers are not just looking at the games he has installed, but are also inspecting emails, photos, spreadsheets, and other content on the phone. The officers give back the phone and leave, having already seen that a spreadsheet is named heroin-inventory.xls (but not opened it). They then acquire a search warrant, return, seize the phone, search it, arrest the resident, and charge him with a variety of drug-related crimes.

  Is the evidence found on the phone admissible in court? Why or why not? Cite any relevant rules, laws, or precedents.