Search Insanity

There are many tasks that have to be conducted in my line of work. One of which is the search warrant. Many times, the warrant is not yours, but you are on a team that has been assigned to do a search.

The feelings that come with the search are directly related to what is being searched for. For example, searching for drugs? That's awesome. You know that for every kilo of coke you find, it's going to be evidence against someone. You KNOW that what you have found (should you actually find something) is definitely useful to the case.

On the other hand, there is the search that will make you gouge your brain out. This is the document search, generally associated with white collar crime. These searches are long and tedious. You show up at an office, and it always has the worst record keeping imaginable. Nothing ever makes complete sense. Also, you have no idea why they keep paper records, but they do.

In the end, you obtain boxes and boxes of documents. I'm talking hundreds of boxes. You literally need trucks to take it all away, and you have to lift those boxes into those trucks. And you know what? You have no idea if any of it will be useful to the case. Actually, you usually feel that most of it won't be. You're also sure that most of it will never be looked at, and if it is, not any time soon. No human being could, in a reasonable amount of time, sort through all of those documents, and find some golden nugget of incriminating evidence.

In between drugs and documents are computers. The thing is, there is a huge amount of information that can be seized from computers, and getting the machines isn't usually as tedious as getting actual documents. You're almost hopeful when you get a computer. You can't actually see that there isn't anything useful there. Also, it takes a lot less lifting to take someone's laptop.
Even better, you know that the information that you get can be searched with various programs, helping you to wade through the data.