This is an old thread, but I stumbled onto it looking into a recent news story. I’m curious what gives you confidence that they couldn’t charge the owner for crimes discovered during the process of viewing footage. It’s not like they’re surrendering the content under some immunity agreement, especially when the vehicle is being seized under a warrant in the first place.

I’m not a lawyer, but I would imagine this would fall under the plain view doctrine. If through the course of a valid 4th amendment search (in this case with a warrant from a judge), evidence is uncovered (even of unrelated crimes) it is generally admissible under the doctrine. If police show up at your house to ask about a crime, and when you open the door they see a bag of drugs on the table, not only can they charge you for it, but they can use it as justification for further warrants or investigations.

Plan view is even well established to extend to sounds and smells, as well. I believe it’s even a successful justification for evidence if the original activity wasn’t warranted, but executed in good faith (e.g. they serve a warrant on the wrong house and discover evidence in the process).

I believe to suppress evidence obtained from a casual viewing of the footage, you’d have to either prove that the original basis for seizing the vehicle was invalid and in bad faith (a challenging endeavor), or prove that they were purposely viewing footage outside of what was relevant for their initial cause. In the latter case they’d probably just argue that they “stumbled” upon it.

Plus it’s unlikely that the warrant was narrow enough in the first place to restrict them to just viewing the relevant time because it’s not like the courts are bending over backwards to protect the 4th amendment, or privacy.

Regardless of the success rate for suppressing this type of evidence, I suspect they could, and most likely would, charge the owner at the very least.