A new bill in the Florida House proposes to give police much more time to search electronic devices seized via a search warrant. The bill, HB-359, was advanced unanimously from the State House Subcommittee on Criminal Justice Tuesday.
State Rep. Adam Anderson (R–Palm Harbor) is sponsoring HB-359, which seeks to change state law to give police more time to complete searches of electronic devices permitted by a judge’s warrant. Under current law, search warrants for electronic devices must be returned to the issuing judge within 45 days, in practice capping the time available to search those devices as part of a criminal investigation. Anderson’s bill would lengthen that to a year.
The bill was added to the agenda of the Criminal Justice Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee this week and was discussed at their hearing Tuesday. A similar bill was filed by State Senator Clay Yarborough (R–Jacksonville).
“Digital encryption is getting more and more sophisticated. These common devices also had a significant increase in storage … In cases involving child sexual abuse material, that can mean tens of thousands of images, videos and encrypted messages, sometimes on a dozen or more devices in a single case,” Anderson said before the subcommittee.
“Imaging, indexing, and analyzing this volume of material often takes several months – and that doesn’t even include the time it could take to crack a six digit password on an iPhone.”
Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney Bruce Bartlett traveled to Tallahassee to add his voice in favor of the bill. He highlighted that the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office, which he described as “one of the more sophisticated units, with five examiners,” has seen its caseload increase by 25% each year for several years; he requested 519 search warrants for electronic devices in 2025.
The 45 day time period HB-359 proposes to replace is itself new – it was increased from the 10 days, which is the term for all other search warrants, in an omnibus law enforcement bill passed unanimously in April. Speaking to Poliverse, Anderson highlighted that that period was a stopgap measure in response to Moschella v. State, a Manatee County case where a defendant accused of possessing child pornography was freed after it was determined the evidence of the crime came from a search warrant that was “stale,” or executed after the statutory window. That concern would be greatly reduced due to Anderson’s bill.
The challenge presented by electronic searches has long been a thorn in the side of law enforcement. An FDLE report from 2019 noted that law enforcement frequently struggled to complete investigations into crimes ranging from homicide to sexual exploitation to public corruption as a result of challenges with data recovery across both Apple and Android phones. Ninety-two percent of responding law enforcement agencies reported being unable to access data from the devices in at least one case in the available search period.
The bill drew strong support from Jonathan Vazquez, President of the Suncoast Police Benevolent Association. The Suncoast PBA “strongly supports legislation that provides law enforcement officers with additional, reasonable time: (i) to overcome encryption; (ii) to lawfully access electronic devices; and (iii) to thoroughly review complex and voluminous digital evidence,” Vazquez said in a statement to Poliverse.
“Giving detectives the tools and time they need to break through these tech barriers in a lawful way is not about expanding government power; it is about ensuring that people who hurt children cannot hide behind a dark wall of technology to escape justice.”
State Rep. Lindsay Cross (D–St. Petersburg) had been waiting to hear more before coming to a view on the bill; she ultimately voted yes. “Very compelling reason why it’s necessary to increase the time period as electronic devices get more complicated and have more storage capacity,” she told Poliverse.
However, Rory Safir, a St. Petersburg-based criminal defense attorney with experience involving digital evidence and constitutional issues, cautioned that the privacy impacts of the increase were significant. “[This bill] means the government can keep going through someone’s digital life for much longer before a judge ever sees the full scope of what was searched.
“Short deadlines naturally keep searches tighter and more focused on what officers originally had legal cause to look for. A year-long window moves the process toward slower, more open-ended searches. Digital forensic backlogs are real, but extending people’s exposure to government searches is not the same thing as fixing the workload problem.”
The 45-day turnaround period already enacted this year is already long by the standards of most states. Some, like North Carolina, allow for as little as 48 hours for police to conduct searches. Many states follow Florida’s 10-day limit. Poliverse was unable to find any case where a state or federal government had a full year to execute a warrant.
“In federal cases investigators generally have to seek court-approved extensions if they need more time,” noted Safir.
All states, including Florida, require that a search warrant be tailored to evidence of a specific crime and that where possible the search be limited to evidence of that crime, per the Fourth Amendment, as Anderson noted.
“We’re not changing anything when it comes to probable cause, we’re not changing anything regarding the judicial system, we’re not changing anything constitutional,” he told Poliverse following the vote. “We’re just unclogging the system and removing the burden on law enforcement.
“I’m really concerned that without changes like this we’re going to see more child porn cases like this dismissed on procedural grounds, instead of decided on the evidence.”
Vazquez agreed. “Law enforcement officers already operate under strict judicial oversight and constitutional safeguards. This legislative adjustment simply gives them the tools they need in an increasingly technologically complex arena.
“Laws that were written even a few years ago are not on pace with 2025’s crimes.”