The accused was charged with possession and distribution of child pornography.
The police used automated software tools (the Roundup Suite) to detect the accused's IP address sharing child pornography files on the BitTorrent peer-to-peer network.
The accused brought a Charter s. 8 and Garofoli application to exclude the evidence, arguing that the automated surveillance constituted an unreasonable search and that the Information to Obtain (ITO) the search warrant was flawed.
The Superior Court of Justice dismissed the application, finding that the accused had no reasonable expectation of privacy in his IP address, port, or the files he knowingly exposed in a shared folder on a public network.
The court also upheld the validity of the search warrant and production order, finding the ITOs were adequate and not misleading.
