55 years ago, in a courthouse serving the San Jose-Milpitas district of Santa Clara County, a judge for the first time signed a search warrant that treated a computer system as something that could be searched, and its content seized. Dated February 19, 1971, the order authorized Oakland Police to enter offices in Palo Alto and homes in Menlo Park to look not just for papers but also for data stored on machines.
The case involved University Computing Company and a program described in court documents as a remote-plotting system (a trade secret) valued at $15,000, or around $120,000 today. In his affidavit, Sgt. Terence Green requested authority to seize “computer memory bank or other data storage devices,” along with “computer printout sheets,” language that shows how investigators might have been struggling to grapple with the concept of intangible forms of property at a time when most computing infrastructure would fill entire rooms.
