evidence in question, and even (if documentary or electronic evidence was sought) to rummage through file cabinets and to seize and examine the hard drives of computers or other electronic devices. That is because the Constitution protects “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects” not absolutely, but only “against unreasonable searches and seizures,” id. (emphasis added), and strikes the balance between the protection of privacy and the needs of law enforcement by requiring, in most cases, a warrant supported by a judicial finding of probable cause before the most intrusive of searches can take place. See, e.g., Riley v. California, 134 S. Ct. 2473, 2482 (2014). Congress, of course, is free to impose even stricter requirements on specific types of searches – and it has occasionally done so, for example in connection with the real-time interception of communications (as in wiretapping and electronic eavesdropping). See 18 U.S.C. § 2518(3)(a) (permitting the approval of wiretap applications only in connection with investigations of certain enumerated crimes); id. § 2518(3)(c) (requiring that a judge find that “normal investigative procedures have been tried and have failed or reasonably appear to be unlikely to succeed if tried or to be too dangerous” before a wiretap application can be approved). But it has not done so for permitting government access to any category of stored electronic communications, and Microsoft does not challenge the constitutional adequacy of the protections provided by the Act to those communications. Put another way, Microsoft does not argue here that, if the emails sought by the government were stored on a server at its headquarters in Redmond, Washington, there would be any constitutional obstacle to the government’s acquiring them by the same means that it used in this case. Indeed, as explained above, the showing made by the government would support a warrant that permitted agents to forcibly enter those headquarters and seize the server itself. 3

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