This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, March 8th, 2024.

I'm Caleb Brown.

How Police Get Warrants and the information that police can cull with those warrants have changed dramatically with new technology.

Cato's Brent Scorup discusses the rise of so-called reverse warrants.

He discusses how courts are now handling them.

I have seen, I guess, defense attorneys

on social media saying, I am begging you.

Please stop googling the elements of the crimes that you have committed.

And it's pretty obvious why that authorities can obtain that information with varying levels of requirement when it comes to sort of the processes that they have to use in order to get that information.

And that is often used as evidence against people in court at trial to prove that they did something or at least had the mind, the mens rea, to engage in that behavior.

But a lot of police agencies have undertaken a reverse warrant, which is to say,

we are investigating a crime, so we want to know information that exists about this crime.

Can you walk us through just sort of what the difference is between a warrant when a police

agency or some other agency comes into your

home and says we are searching for this we have reason to believe that you were involved in this.

And so we're executing a warrant

because we already have reason to believe

that you have been involved in this

versus the reverse warrant where we just want to know all the

information about this thing. So you're seeing with police departments and

criminal investigations across the country the rise of reverse

warrants and what I see is a big difference between a traditional warrant and a reverse warrant

...