crime has been committed or not (see Ghani v. Jones). In Hanahoe v. Hussey, therefore, which involved the search of a solicitor’s office and the seizure of documents relating to clients of that solicitor, Kinlen J accepted that warrants may allow for the gathering of information as well as evidence and involves (scrupulously carried out) a “necessarily consideration of many more documents than there is ultimately seized in order to satisfy the searcher that all relevant documents have been obtained.”Similarly, in the United Kingdom, the High Court held in R.(H.) v. Commissioners of Inland Revenue that an officer conducting a search was entitled to seize a computer disk so that its contents could be viewed elsewhere, notwithstanding the fact that the disk might include material which was irrelevant to the purpose of the search. The limits of this general power were, however, made clear in the CRH case referred to above. In that case, it was held that the copying, removal and examination of the entire personal email account of the managing director of a company went beyond the statutory powers of the CCPC. Charleton J referred to:- extraordinary scope of what was seized. It was every single “the email from a particular person…the problem is in the seizure of an entire email account of many thousands of communications without justification for such an ample and undifferentiated seizure. Nor does the context necessarily, as in the examples just given, provide that justification. This search was done without any relevant dates as target and without the consideration of using target search terms or some other means of limiting the material proportionately to what needed to be taken. That may be justified where the police or investigating authority needs to search out accomplices or co-conspirators to prevent or investigate an atrocity or where the identification or an organised crime or terrorist ring requires a complete analysis of all information available as to their communications. Such a necessity, however, has not been identified here by the Commission.”
crime has been committed or not (see Ghani v. Jones). In Hanahoe v. Hussey, therefore, which involved the search of a solicitor’s office and the seizure of documents relating to clients of that solicitor, Kinlen J accepted that warrants may allow for the gathering of information as well as evidence and “necessarily involves (scrupulously carried out) a consideration of many more documents than there is ultimately seized in order to satisfy the searcher that all relevant documents have been obtained.”Similarly, in the United Kingdom, the High Court held in R.(H.) v. Commissioners of Inland Revenue that an officer conducting a search was entitled to seize a computer disk so that its contents could be viewed elsewhere, notwithstanding the fact that the disk might include material which was irrelevant to the purpose of the search. The limits of this general power were, however, made clear in the CRH case referred to above. In that case, it was held that the copying, removal and examination of the entire personal email account of the managing director of a company went beyond the statutory powers of the CCPC. Charleton J referred to:- “the extraordinary scope of what was seized. It was every single email from a particular person…the problem is in the seizure of an entire email account of many thousands of communications without justification for such an ample and undifferentiated seizure. Nor does the context necessarily, as in the examples just given, provide that justification. This search was done without any relevant dates as target and without the consideration of using target search terms or some other means of limiting the material proportionately to what needed to be taken. That may be justified where the police or investigating authority needs to search out accomplices or co-conspirators to prevent or investigate an atrocity or where the identification or an organised crime or terrorist ring requires a complete analysis of all information available as to their communications. Such a necessity, however, has not been identified here by the Commission.”
working-with-witnesses-in-regulatory-investigations.docx