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Hash It Out: Fourth Amendment Protection Of Electronically Stored Child Exploitation, Rebekah A. Branham

Akron Law Review

Few courts have addressed whether ISP’s use of hash-based evaluation violates an individual’s Fourth Amendment rights. In 2018, the Fifth Circuit was presented with this issue in United States v. Reddick. The defendant is Reddick uploaded files to the cloud-sharing server Microsoft SkyDrive. Thereafter PhotoDNA, a computer software program that uses hashing, automatically reviewed the hash values of those files and compared them against its database of known child pornography hash values. PhotoDNA detected a hash value match between the defendant’s photos and the database. It then created a “CyberTip,” sending the files and users information to the NCMEC. …