03/02/2020 US v. Ganias, 755 F. 3d 125 - Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit 2014 - Google Scholar widespread seizure of items that were not within the scope of the warrant, and (2) do not act in good faith." United States v. Shi Yan Liu, 239 F.3d 138, 140 (2d Cir. 2000) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). The Government effects a "widespread seizure of items" beyond the scope of the warrant when the Government's search "resemble[s] a general search." Id. at 140-41. Government agents act in good faith when they perform "searches conducted in objectively reasonable reliance on binding appellate precedent." Davis v. United States, ___ U.S. ___, 131 S.Ct. 2419, 2423-24, 180 L.Ed.2d 285 (2011). When Government agents act on "good-faith reliance [o]n the law at the time of the search," the exclusionary rule will not apply. United States v. Aguiar, 737 F.3d 251, 259 (2d Cir.2013). "The burden is on the government to demonstrate the objective reasonableness of the officers' good faith reliance." United States v. Voustianiouk, 685 F.3d 206, 215 (2d Cir.2012) (internal quotation marks omitted). Furthermore, evidence will be suppressed only where the benefits of deterring the Government's unlawful actions appreciably outweigh the costs of suppressing the evidence — "a high obstacle for those urging ... application" of the 137 *137 rule. Herring, 555 U.S. at 141, 129 S.Ct. 695; see Pennsylvania Bd. of Prob. & Parole v. Scott, 524 U.S. 357, 36465, 118 S.Ct. 2014, 141 L.Ed.2d 344 (1998) (citing United States v. Payner, 447 U.S. 727, 734, 100 S.Ct. 2439, 65 L.Ed.2d 468 (1980)). "The principal cost of applying the [exclusionary] rule is, of course, letting guilty and possibly dangerous defendants go free-something that `offends basic concepts of the criminal justice system.'" Herring, 555 U.S. at 141, 129 S.Ct. 695 (quoting United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 908, 104 S.Ct. 3405, 82 L.Ed.2d 677 (1984)). 2. Analysis This case presents a host of challenging issues, but we need not address them all. The parties agree that the personal financial records at issue in this appeal were not covered by the 2003 warrant, and that they had been segregated from the responsive files by December 2004, before the Government began to suspect that Ganias was personally involved in any criminal activity. Furthermore, on appeal, Ganias does not directly challenge the Government's practice of making mirror images of computer hard drives when searching for electronic data, but rather challenges the reasonableness of its off-site review. Accordingly, we need not address whether: (1) the description of the computer files to be seized in the 2003 warrant was stated with sufficient particularity, see, e.g., Galpin, 720 F.3d at 449-50; (2) the 2003 warrant authorized the Government to make a mirror image of the entire hard drive so it could search for relevant files off-site; or (3) the resulting off-site sorting process was unreasonably long. Instead, we consider a more limited question: whether the Fourth Amendment permits officials executing a warrant for the seizure of particular data on a computer to seize and indefinitely retain every file on that computer for use in future criminal investigations. We hold that it does not. If the 2003 warrant authorized the Government to retain all the data on Ganias's computers on the off-chance the information would become relevant to a subsequent criminal investigation, it would be the equivalent of a general warrant. The Government's retention of copies of Ganias's personal computer records for two-and-a-half years deprived him of exclusive control over those files for an unreasonable amount of time. This combination of circumstances enabled the Government to possess indefinitely personal records of Ganias that were beyond the scope of the warrant while it looked for other evidence to give it probable cause to search the files. This was a meaningful interference with Ganias's possessory rights in those files and constituted a seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. See United States v. Place, 462 U.S. 696, 708, 103 S.Ct. 2637, 77 L.Ed.2d 110 (1983) (detaining a traveler's luggage while awaiting the arrival of a drug-sniffing dog constituted a seizure); see also Soldal v. Cook Cnty., 506 U.S. 56, 62-64, 68, 113 S.Ct. 538, 121 L.Ed.2d 450 (1992) (explaining that a seizure occurs when one's property rights are violated, even if the property is never searched and the owner's privacy was never violated); Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp., 458 U.S. 419, 435, 102 S.Ct. 3164, 73 L.Ed.2d 868 (1982) ("The power to exclude has traditionally been considered one of the most treasured strands in an owner's bundle of property rights."). We conclude that the unauthorized seizure and retention of these documents was unreasonable. The Government had no warrant authorizing the seizure of Ganias's personal records in 2003. By December 2004, these documents had 138 been separated *138 from those relevant to the investigation of American Boiler and IPM. Nevertheless, the Government continued to retain them for another year-and-a-half until it finally developed probable cause to search and seize them in 2006. Without some independent basis for its retention of those documents in the interim, the Government clearly violated Ganias's Fourth Amendment rights by retaining the files for a prolonged period of time and then using them in a future criminal investigation. The Government offers several arguments to justify its actions, but none provides any legal authorization for its continued and prolonged possession of the non-responsive files. First, it argues that it must be allowed to make the https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=16926744034394821172&hl=en&as_sdt=6&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr 7/11