The first search warrant for a computer in history—55 years ago! 55 years ago, on February 19, 1971, a judge in California signed the first warrant in the history of jurisprudence for the search and seizure of... computer data. The case revolved around the theft of intellectual property. A proprietary remote graphing program worth $15,000 was stolen from a company. The investigator had to sweat quite a bit to explain the concept of intangible assets to the judge. In the end, the warrant specified the seizure of punch cards, paper code printouts, and other magnetic storage devices. The most interesting part is how the procedure itself unfolded. Computers back then filled entire rooms, so hauling them away wasn't feasible. Based on the surviving investigator reports (that's when the first guide to digital forensics began to emerge), the cops handled it competently, without cutting the power. Instead, they printed out paper listings of directories from the Fastrand drives and carefully dumped the necessary files onto 9 magnetic tapes.

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