Despite the massive success of some music in billboard charts, Spotify, and other entertainment media, music piracy has a significant negative impact on sales of CD and album records of music. According to research conducted on American Internet users in 2018, over 27 percent of the users admitted that they regularly download music and video files, a 17 percent increase over the past two years ( DeNardis, 2020) . These activities are costly, not only the billions of dollars in lost revenue but also significant loss in jobs and substantial tax revenue losses. Music piracy, the act of copying and distributing songs whereby the owner has not given consent, is a criminal offense. After receiving an anonymous call as an investigator in the local police department, the workstation has potential pieces of evidence that I could use to strengthen the investigation against the workstation's user. First, the workstation has three flash drives, one currently on the computer and the other one present on the desk. I could use these flash drives to strengthen the investigation by checking on the contents of copyrighted music. It is more likely to find one if not all of the drives consisting of copyrighted songs that the user has downloaded off the internet to redistribute to other media such as CDs and phones. Secondly, the workstation contains a pair of headphones. Even though music piracy is not evidence, I could use it to support that the user uses the device to listen to unpurchased copyrighted songs. Additionally, the presence of a computer is enough to justify the caller's argument of music piracy. I would confiscate the computer and conduct further analysis on web browsing history and the kinds of programs installed on the host machine. The workstation also contains a lot of boxes and one that appears to be a pack of CDs. However, I would also have to conduct further analysis upon the issuance of a search warrant. Other potential pieces of evidence that could strengthen the case would be tablet and external speakers. In conclusion, even though the workstation user is a potential criminal who might be charged with music piracy, I would have to conduct further investigation. The presence of crucial evidence such as the computer, flash drives, speakers, and headphones would also be used to strengthen the investigation. Therefore, I would first obtain a search warrant and confiscate all the workstation evidence for further analysis. For a police officer or any government official to search for any private property, the law requires them to obtain a search warrant. The warrant acts as an order that a magistrate or any other top judicial designator should sign to search for specific materials at a specified location. Therefore, the officer must convince the judge that the cause of a specified crime originates from the place to be searched, and the evidence of a crime might be present at the location. In this scenario, I would use the anonymous call to draft an affidavit to the judge or magistrate with information in written reports or statements that report the music piracy incidence as narrated by the anonymous caller. If the judge or the designator believes that the affidavit is sufficient and would establish an elaborate cause to perform a search, he or she will issue a warrant. Even after successfully obtaining a search warrant, the user of the workspace has privacy rights. In this case, I would be only allowed to search the place described in the warrant and for the properties described. For example, the warrant might have directed me only to search the computer for potential leads. I will infringe the user's privacy if I conduct a search of their personal space. If the search warrant specifies that I should not search the user, I would be obliged to follow the order unless I have independent probable cause to search the user. Even though conducting searches on personal spaces require a warrant, the federal court appeal in 1979 rules that the government does not need a search warrant to monitor internet activity. According to the ruling made concerning a drug case in California, pen registers do not constitute a search warrant ( Rosner & Kenneally, 2018) . In the ruling, the court noted that people lack subjective privacy expectations in numbers they dial because they know that the numbers conveyed are visible to the telecommunication company. Internet users are aware of the lack of privacy in the websites they use; therefore, the courts presume that they should not have privacy expectations since they voluntarily share their information with third-party websites. Even though the law requires police officers to get court approvals for the search, they are not obliged to obtain a search warrant. Whether it is on an employer's workspace or a private residence, crime scenes are a sensitive area and require methodological collection and recovery of evidence for accurate analysis of data. Information collected from the crime scene would enable police officers to identify suspects and take the required action correctly. Even though the crime scene needs to be free from any interference, this is not usually the case, and investigators always face various challenges while recovering evidence from these scenes. Additionally, challenges exhibited by the officers in a private residence crime scene are usually different from those faced while recovering data from an employer's workspace. Police officers recovering evidence from a private residence face contamination challenges. In this case, private residences might be contaminated when fingerprints or other distractions such as pets or family members compromise the evidence's quality. If the workstation is a home office, family members might be using the same computer to assess data making it harder for investigators to pin the music piracy crime on one individual. Such cases might lead to longer investigation times and even conviction of the wrong suspect. Another challenge might be the loss of evidence due to human traffic at the crime scene. On the other hand, employers' workspace has a lot of challenges for investigators, including conflict with other departments, curiosity from spectators, among others. In an employer's workspaces, it is challenging to determine the leader who has jurisdiction over crime scenes, leading to conflicts ( DeNardis, 2020) . The collection of evidence from such workspaces might lead to prolonged conflict since the department would claim the evidence's repossession. Employer's workspaces also draw a lot of attention from curious employees who might become a threat to the overall organization progress and even the investigation. The constant movement of employees might also impede the investigation. Therefore, to curb these challenges, the process of recovering evidence from both private residence and employer's workspace should be collaborative. The involvement of all stakeholders during the investigation progress would go a long way in improving the process's efficiency.
References
DeNardis, L. (2020). The internet in everything: Freedom and security in a world with no off switch . Yale University Press.
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Rosner, G., & Kenneally, E. (2018, June). Privacy and the Internet of Things: Emerging frameworks for policy and design. In Rosner, Gilad and Kenneally, Erin, Privacy and the Internet of Things: Emerging Frameworks for Policy and Design (June 7, 2018). UC Berkeley Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity/Internet of Things Privacy Forum .
