United States v. Richard Brillhart

USCA11 Case: 24-13226 Document: 55-1 Date Filed: 07/09/2026 Page: 1 of 37 FOR PUBLICATION In the United States Court of Appeals For the Eleventh Circuit ____________________ No. 24-13226 ____________________ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, versus RICHARD EDWARD BRILLHART, Defendant-Appellant. ____________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida D.C. Docket No. 2:22-cr-00053-SPC-NPM-1 ____________________ ____________________ No. 24-13232 ____________________ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, versus USCA11 Case: 24-13226 Document: 55-1 Date Filed: 07/09/2026 Page: 2 of 37 2 Opinion of the Court 24-13226 RICHARD EDWARD BRILLHART, Defendant-Appellant. ____________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida D.C. Docket No. 2:03-cr-00121-JES-KCD-1 ____________________ Before NEWSOM, LUCK, Circuit Judges, and LEIBOWITZ,* District Judge. NEWSOM, Circuit Judge: Richard Brillhart was convicted of possessing and distrib- uting child pornography and sentenced to 480 months’ imprison- ment. On appeal, he raises a host of challenges arising out of the investigation and prosecution of his crimes. Most prominently, Brillhart argues that law-enforcement agents violated his Fourth Amendment rights when they searched a file that Google had found in his Gmail account and turned over to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The key question before us is whether Google’s initial determination that the file contained child pornography—which it reached by em- ploying an automated “hash-value matching” protocol—was the sort of “private search” that may, in appropriate circumstances, au- thorize a later government search. For reasons we’ll explain, we * Honorable David S. Leibowitz, United States District Judge for the Southern District of Florida, sitting by designation. USCA11 Case: 24-13226 Document: 55-1 Date Filed: 07/09/2026 Page: 3 of 37 24-13226 Opinion of the Court 3 hold that it was and, therefore, that the government’s subsequent search of the file, which revealed no new material information, didn’t violate the Fourth Amendment. Brillhart separately challenges the government’s decision to charge him with both distribution and possession of child pornog- raphy, as well as the district court’s admission (or exclusion) of var- ious pieces of evidence, its denial of his motion for judgment of acquittal, and several of its sentencing decisions. On these issues, we affirm the district court in all respects save one: its application of a five-level “pattern of activity” sentencing enhancement under U.S.S.G. § 2G2.2(b)(5). Because we vacate and remand for resen- tencing to correct that error, we needn’t address Brillhart’s chal- lenges to his supervised-release-revocation sentence. I A Tech companies face an issue that social-media users know to be all too real: A non-negligible amount of unlawful activity oc- curs on their platforms. That creates legal and reputational risks. To combat the posting and sharing of harmful content, and to mit- igate the associated perils, the companies have developed a variety of tools—some manual, others automated. This case turns, at least in part, on the particulars of one of the tools that Google has de- ployed to thwart the proliferation of child pornography. Google apprises users of its anti-pornography initiatives in two ways. First, and most directly, its “terms of service,” to which customers must consent, expressly prohibit the use of its service USCA11 Case: 24-13226 Document: 55-1 Date Filed: 07/09/2026 Page: 4 of 37 4 Opinion of the Court 24-13226 “in violation of the law”—and, more expressly still, prohibit the dis- tribution of “child pornography.” Tr. of Mot. to Suppress Hr’g at 90, Dkt. No. 192. Second, and more indirectly, Google issues “transparency report[s]” that publicize its efforts to “identify, re- move and report” child pornography using a “combination” of hu- man review and “automated detection tools.” Id. at 97. Specifically at issue here is one of those “automated detec- tion tools” called hash-value matching. A hash value is a string of characters that together represent a file’s unique, algorithmically generated “digital fingerprint.” Id. at 121. 123. As relevant here, that means that if a photographic file is altered in any way, the hash value will change. Id. at 172. By contrast—and we’ll elaborate on the nuances in good time—if “two files ha[ve] the same hash value, they’re the same file[.]” Id. at 20. To be sure, our flesh-and-blood senses rebel at the notion that a digital image can be reduced to a collection of non-visual characters. But the fact is that a computer never “sees” the image as we do. To the computer, a hash value is a perfectly adequate—and accurate—digital stand-in. Here’s how Google’s hash-value matching protocol works: When the company detects a suspicious file—whether through a user report, automated scanning, or some other process—it imme- diately compares the file’s hash value to those in an internal “CSAM” (i.e., child sexual abuse material) repository. That reposi- tory contains the hash values of files previously determined by Google’s expert human reviewers to depict child pornography. Ac- USCA11 Case: 24-13226 Document: 55-1 Date Filed: 07/09/2026 Page: 5 of 37 24-13226 Opinion of the Court 5 companying these hash values are standard “industry classifica- tion[s]”—jointly established by several internet service providers— that categorize the type of content in the file. So, for example, the classification “B1” means that the file depicts a “[p]ubescent minor involved in [an] overt sex act.” Id. at 114. If the hash value of the suspect file matches one in the repos- itory designated and classified as child pornography, then Google sends the file, along with its hash and classification, to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC)—which, in turn, forwards the material to the appropriate law-enforcement of- ficials. If the file’s hash value doesn’t match one in the repository, a Google employee will conduct a manual review. If he determines that it depicts child pornography, he may note the hash value and add it to the company’s internal repository along with his judgment about the image’s proper categorization. But the information he relays to NCMEC—file, hash value, categorization—are the same as that he would have conveyed had there been a hash match. B Enter Richard Brillhart. In May 2021, Yahoo and Google in- dependently flagged email accounts transmitting what the compa- nies believed to be child pornography. Two of those accounts— reb3280e@yahoo.com and reb3280@gmail.com—had a few com- mon, revealing identifiers pointing to Brillhart: Both were created under the name “Reb Reb,” both listed the same recovery phone number tied to Brillhart, both used his birthdate (March 2, 1980) in USCA11 Case: 24-13226 Document: 55-1 Date Filed: 07/09/2026 Page: 6 of 37 6 Opinion of the Court 24-13226 the usernames, and one listed his birthdate in its subscriber infor- mation. Reviews of the email accounts yielded a lot of incriminating material. Brillhart’s Yahoo accounts were used to transmit 241 vid- eos and images of suspected child pornography, including some de- picting toddlers and prepubescent children engaged in sexual acts with adult men. One message included a selfie, which company investigators used to identify Brillhart. Consistent with Yahoo cor- porate policy, each file was manually reviewed by a human being and confirmed to be child pornography. The company then sent the files, along with Brillhart’s identifying information and sex-of- fender status, to NCMEC. Google’s investigation determined that three of Brillhart’s email accounts contained a total of four illicit files. Three files were confirmed to depict child pornography by way of human review, the fourth through the hash-matching protocol already described. Like Yahoo, Google relayed the results of its investigation to NCMEC. In possession of the files and Brillhart’s identifying infor- mation, NCMEC identified his residence and promptly forwarded all the incriminating files and accompanying information to Officer Katrina Lee of the Fort Myers Police Department. From the com- panies’ “CyberTips,” Officer Lee could tell that they had already identified each of the files as child pornography. Importantly here, Google’s report specifically indicated that it had verified one of the files through hash matching. Officer Lee understood that to mean USCA11 Case: 24-13226 Document: 55-1 Date Filed: 07/09/2026 Page: 7 of 37 24-13226 Opinion of the Court 7 that “while the contents of the file were not reviewed concurrently to making the report, historically, a person had reviewed a file whose hash, or digital footprint, matched the hash of the reported image and determined it contained apparent child pornography.” Id. at 171. In short, she knew (1) that an actual Google employee had previously reviewed the image as part of another user’s file, determined it to be child pornography, and ensured that it was as- signed a hash value, and (2) that Google had thereafter digitally matched the hash value of the file in Brillhart’s account to the value of the previously reviewed image. Acting without a warrant, Of- ficer Lee proceeded to review all the files for herself and confirmed that they did in fact depict child pornography. She relayed her con- clusions to agents at Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), who relied on the information to obtain search warrants for Brillhart’s apartment, car, and Yahoo and Google accounts. On the morning of September 8, 2021, HSI Special Agent Elijah Cook executed the warrant on Brillhart’s apartment. Brillhart shared the two-bedroom apartment with Rodney Dutra— himself a convicted child-pornography possessor who was later ar- rested for a parole violation arising out of this investigation. In Brillhart’s bedroom, Special Agent Cook recovered a cellphone containing a micro-SD card. The card held 40 videos and 60 images of child pornography, including some involving victims as young as six months old. Six of the images matched files previously sent from reb3280@yahoo.com. Like the email accounts, the SD card contained selfies of Brillhart. USCA11 Case: 24-13226 Document: 55-1 Date Filed: 07/09/2026 Page: 8 of 37 8 Opinion of the Court 24-13226 HSI agents separately executed a search warrant on Brillhart’s Yahoo accounts, where they found emails welcoming Brillhart to Kik—an online messaging platform. The agents then searched “Reb Reb” on Kik and found another account, “flped4u,” registered in August 2021. Upon searching Kik’s records, the agents found more child pornography and Brillhart selfies, and they discovered that other Kik users had reported the account holder for introducing himself as “41M, pedo” from Fort Myers and for send- ing child pornography. C A grand jury indicted Brillhart on two counts: (1) distrib- uting visual depictions of a minor engaged in sexually explicit con- duct “on or about May 10, 2021,” in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 2252(a)(2) and (b)(1); and (2) possessing and accessing with in- tent to view visual depictions of a prepubescent minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct “from on or about April 14, 2021, through on or about September 8, 2021,” in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 2252(a)(4)(B) and (b)(2). Brillhart initially moved to dismiss the charges on the ground that the facts underlying them overlapped and, accordingly, that they violated the Double Jeopardy Clause. The district court denied the motion, concluding that the two counts were based on different images and conduct. As relevant for purposes of appeal, Brillhart then moved to suppress the evidence gathered from his Google account, contend- ing that the government’s search violated the Fourth Amendment. The district court denied that motion as well, alternatively holding USCA11 Case: 24-13226 Document: 55-1 Date Filed: 07/09/2026 Page: 9 of 37 24-13226 Opinion of the Court 9 (1) that Brillhart had no reasonable expectation of privacy in videos and images that he had voluntarily uploaded to his email accounts; (2) that the so-called “private search” doctrine vitiated any Fourth Amendment concerns because Google had discovered the child pornography in Brillhart’s account through both human review and hash matching and because the government’s ensuing search didn’t reveal anything additional; and (3) that, in any event, the “good faith” exception protected Officer Lee’s initial warrantless search. On the eve of his trial, Brillhart moved under Federal Rule of Evidence 403 to prevent the government from introducing into evidence, publishing, or presenting testimony about graphic im- ages or video clips depicting violence against infants or toddlers. The district court denied the motion, reasoning that the material constituted direct evidence of the charged offenses. Without per- sonally reviewing the files in question, the court held that because the government intended to introduce only a limited number of images and videos, the danger of unfair prejudice didn’t substan- tially outweigh their probative value. The government also filed a motion in limine to prevent Brillhart from introducing a series of emails exchanged between his roommate, Dutra, and Dutra’s then-girlfriend, Katie Morris, sev- eral of which referenced Brillhart and the HSI raid of their shared residence. Brillhart insisted that the emails supported his theory that Dutra had framed him. Although he acknowledged that not every email was relevant, he maintained that they were admissible USCA11 Case: 24-13226 Document: 55-1 Date Filed: 07/09/2026 Page: 10 of 37 10 Opinion of the Court 24-13226 for the purpose of impeaching Dutra and Morris. The district court disagreed, excluding the emails as irrelevant and on hearsay grounds. At trial, following the close of the government’s case in chief, Brillhart argued that the evidence was insufficient to convict him and filed a motion for judgment of acquittal, which the district court denied. He also requested a jury instruction on his “theory of defense”—i.e., that he was framed—asking the court to tell the jury “that [Dutra] had access to [Brillhart]’s room, email, phone, and other devices and downloaded the child pornography at issue.” The court denied the request, deeming it sufficient to instruct ju- rors that Brillhart “can only be found guilty for what he has done.” The jury convicted Brillhart on both counts. At sentencing, Brillhart moved for additional psychological evaluations to assist the court in determining an appropriate sen- tence. The district court denied the motion, noting that Brillhart’s mental-health history was already well documented: a bipolar-dis- order diagnosis in 2000 and hebephilia 1 and sexual-sadism-disorder diagnoses in 2018. Brillhart also moved to continue sentencing, as- serting a desire to attend a mental-health appointment and file an untimely new-trial motion. The court denied that motion, as well. The district court enhanced Brillhart’s sentence by five lev- els on the ground that he had engaged in a “pattern of activity in- volving the sexual abuse or exploitation of a minor” within the 1 Hebephilia refers to an interest in early-adolescent pubescent children. USCA11 Case: 24-13226 Document: 55-1 Date Filed: 07/09/2026 Page: 11 of 37 24-13226 Opinion of the Court 11 meaning of U.S.S.G. § 2G2.2(b)(5). It did so based on two of Brillhart’s past offenses: a conviction for fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct arising out of a sexual encounter with a 15-year-old, and a probation violation arising out of a sexual encounter with a 16-year-old. Brillhart objected, arguing that controlling precedent required that each instance of abuse or exploitation itself match one of the statutory references listed in the Guidelines’ commen- tary. He maintained that the probation violation involving the 16- year-old didn’t match and therefore couldn’t count toward the “pattern.” The district court disagreed and sentenced Brillhart to the statutory maximum of 480 months on the distribution count and a concurrent 240 months on the possession count. At the same hearing, the court further found that the distribution and posses- sion convictions violated the terms of Brillhart’s supervised release related to an earlier conviction and, accordingly, imposed an addi- tional two-year term of imprisonment. Sent’g Tr. at 4, 76, 86, Dkt. No. 245. II On appeal, Brillhart raises a total of 11 issues. First, and most significantly, he argues that the district court erred in relying on the “private search” doctrine to uphold against a Fourth Amendment challenge the warrantless search of a file identified as child pornog- raphy by Google through a hash-matching procedure; this auto- mated process, he says, doesn’t qualify as the sort of private search to which the doctrine applies. Second, Brillhart contends that child-pornography possession is a lesser-included offense of distri- USCA11 Case: 24-13226 Document: 55-1 Date Filed: 07/09/2026 Page: 12 of 37 12 Opinion of the Court 24-13226 bution, and that by charging him with both the government vio- lated the Double Jeopardy Clause. Third, he asserts that there was insufficient evidence to convict him on either count. Fourth, he argues that the district court abused its discretion by allowing the government to display child pornography to the jury—doubly so, he says, because the court did so without first reviewing the evi- dence. Fifth, Brillhart contends that the district court abused its discretion by excluding emails between his roommate, Dutra, and Dutra’s then-girlfriend, Morris, which he says would have shown Dutra’s motive and ability to frame him. Sixth, he asserts that the district court erred when it declined his proposed “theory of de- fense” jury instruction. Seventh, Brillhart argues that the district court abused its discretion at sentencing when it denied his mo- tions for additional psychological examinations and a continuance. Eighth, he contends—and the government helpfully concedes— that the district court erred in applying the five-level pattern-of-ac- tivity enhancement under U.S.S.G. § 2G2.2(b)(5). Finally—ninth, tenth, and eleventh—Brillhart claims that his supervised-release- revocation sentence is invalid because the district court miscalcu- lated the applicable Guidelines range, denied him an opportunity to allocute, and imposed a substantively unreasonable sentence. A We begin with Brillhart’s most prominent contention—that Google’s digital hash-matching protocol wasn’t a valid private search, and that law enforcement’s subsequent warrantless review of a file that Google had earlier confirmed to be child pornography USCA11 Case: 24-13226 Document: 55-1 Date Filed: 07/09/2026 Page: 13 of 37 24-13226 Opinion of the Court 13 via hash matching thus violated the Fourth Amendment. 2 The government responds with three alternative bases for affirmance. First, at the threshold, it contends that Brillhart lacked any reason- able expectation of privacy in his illicit files and, therefore, that he enjoyed no Fourth Amendment protection. Second, the govern- ment argues that Google’s hash match was a valid private search that permitted a law-enforcement officer to conduct a subsequent warrantless visual inspection of the images. And finally, it argues that regardless of the legality of the search, the applicability of the private-search doctrine is sufficiently debatable to implicate the good-faith exception to the warrant requirement. The expectation-of-privacy issue is close, but we find that we needn’t address it. Even if Brillhart had the requisite reasonable expectation of privacy, so as to trigger the Fourth Amendment’s protection, we conclude—for reasons we will explain—that the pri- vate-search doctrine insulates law enforcement’s warrantless re- view of Brillhart’s emails here. And, because we hold that the pri- vate-search doctrine applies, we needn’t address the downstream question whether the good-faith exception applies. 1 The private-search doctrine comprises two corollary princi- ples. First, and most obviously, the Fourth Amendment “is wholly 2 We review a denial of suppression for clear error on the facts and the appli- cation of law to facts de novo. United States v. Perkins, 787 F.3d 1329, 1344 (11th Cir. 2015). USCA11 Case: 24-13226 Document: 55-1 Date Filed: 07/09/2026 Page: 14 of 37 14 Opinion of the Court 24-13226 inapplicable to a search or a seizure, even an unreasonable one, ef- fected by a private individual not acting as an agent of the Govern- ment or with the participation or knowledge of any governmental official.” United States v. Castaneda, 997 F.3d 1318, 1327 (11th Cir. 2021) (quoting United States v. Jacobsen, 466 U.S. 109, 113 (1984)). And second, so long as any ensuing search by government officers doesn’t “exceed[] the scope of the private search,” no Fourth Amendment issue arises. Jacobsen, 466 U.S. at 115. Accordingly, the key question in many private-search cases—including this one—is whether the government’s search revealed anything mate- rially more or different than what the private party had already dis- covered. United States v. Jacobsen is the leading case. There, employ- ees of a private-freight carrier discovered a damaged package. Id. at 111. Upon further inspection, they noticed something suspi- cious, so they summoned a DEA agent, alerting him to “a tube con- taining plastic bags and, ultimately, white powder.” Id. at 111, 118. At that point, there was “a virtual certainty that nothing else of sig- nificance was in the package and that a manual inspection of the tube and its contents would not tell [the agent] anything more than he already had been told.” Id. at 119. So even though the agent proceeded to visually inspect the contents of the package in greater detail, doing so “enabled [him] to learn nothing that had not previ- ously been learned during the [company’s] private search.” Id. at 120. Accordingly, the Supreme Court held that the government’s seizure and visual inspection of the package didn’t violate the sus- pect’s Fourth Amendment rights. Id. at 121–22. USCA11 Case: 24-13226 Document: 55-1 Date Filed: 07/09/2026 Page: 15 of 37 24-13226 Opinion of the Court 15 Put simply, the private-search doctrine permits government agents to replicate and verify a private party’s earlier search. And importantly, the fact that the government’s search might be more thorough isn’t disqualifying. In United States v. Garcia-Bercovich, 582 F.3d 1234 (11th Cir. 2009), for instance, we held that where a single shrink-wrapped pallet contained 13 boxes covered by a single ship- ping manifest, a private search of one of the boxes justified the war- rantless search of the other 12. Id. at 1238. We reasoned that the district court’s finding that “it was all one package” wasn’t clearly erroneous and, therefore, that federal agents’ additional investiga- tion didn’t exceed the scope of the earlier private search—and thus didn’t violate the Fourth Amendment. Id. Our decision in United States v. Simpson, 904 F.2d 607 (11th Cir. 1990), is to the same effect. There, a FedEx employee found a package containing a folder with images of nude children, magazines with depictions of minors that might constitute child pornography, and videotapes that the em- ployees determined contained sexually explicit material with actors that appeared to be minors. Id. at 609. We ultimately determined that the FBI’s subsequent investigation of the same material didn’t exceed the scope of the private search “simply because they took more time and were more thorough than the Federal Express agents.” Id. at 610. It was enough that “[t]he box’s contents had already been examined, their illicit character had been determined, and they were open for viewing by the time the [federal agents] arrived on the scene.” Id. To be sure, the private-search doctrine has limits. For in- stance, in Walter v. United States, a splintered Supreme Court held USCA11 Case: 24-13226 Document: 55-1 Date Filed: 07/09/2026 Page: 16 of 37 16 Opinion of the Court 24-13226 that when a private actor opened a misdirected package and did nothing more than read the descriptive labels on videotapes with- out actually examining their contents, the government impermis- sibly expanded the scope of the search when it viewed the videos. 447 U.S. 649, 656 (1980) (plurality opinion); see also id. at 660–62 (White, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment). Our more recent decision in United States v. Sparks, 806 F.3d 1323 (11th Cir. 2015), nicely illustrates the doctrine’s contours. That case involved multiple videos depicting child pornography. We concluded that a federal agent exceeded the scope of the private search when he viewed one of the videos, which the private party had never watched. Id. at 1336. But with respect to a video that the private party had watched, we reasoned that “[t]hough [the fed- eral agent] may have looked at . . . the video more closely than did [the private actor] . . . the private party’s earlier viewing of the same . . . video insulated law enforcement’s later, more thorough review of [it] from transgressing the Fourth Amendment.” Id. 2 As our descriptions indicate, to this point, most private- search cases (at least in this circuit) have involved a flesh-and-blood individual’s review of a disputed piece of evidence. The central question here is whether Google’s digital hash-value matching pro- tocol should be treated the same way for private-search purposes. Recall, first, the nature of the hash value: A hash value is a string of characters that together constitute a file’s unique “digital signa- ture or fingerprint,” such that “if two files ha[ve] the same hash value, they’re the same file[.]” Tr. of Mot. to Suppress Hr’g at 20. USCA11 Case: 24-13226 Document: 55-1 Date Filed: 07/09/2026 Page: 17 of 37 24-13226 Opinion of the Court 17 Recall, next, Google’s particular hash-matching protocol: After an individual Google employee confirms through human review that a particular file depicts child pornography, that file’s hash value is added to a company database along with a corresponding “industry classification” describing the file’s contents. Id. at 101, 105. If, thereafter, an automated process reveals that another file’s hash value matches one in the database, Google concludes—without further human review—that it’s the same file and forwards it along with its classification to NCMEC. Id. at 121–22, 124. Our sister circuits are split over whether hash matching con- stitutes a valid private search. The Fifth and Sixth Circuits have held that it does and, therefore, that a subsequent search by law enforcement of the same images falls within the scope of the hash- match search, and thus of the private-search doctrine. See United States v. Reddick, 900 F.3d 636 (5th Cir. 2018) 3; United States v. Miller, 982 F.3d 412 (6th Cir. 2020). In so holding, both courts emphasized the “near-perfect accuracy” of hash-value matching—which, they say, ensures that law enforcement “learn[s] nothing . . . that it had not already learned from the private search.” Reddick, 900 F.3d at 640; Miller, 982 F.3d at 418. The Second, Fourth, and Ninth Circuits have held, to the contrary, that a hash-value match cannot constitute a valid private search. See United States v. Maher, 120 F.4th 297, 314 (2d Cir. 2024); 3 Reddick concerned Microsoft’s hash-matching protocol. At least at the time of that case, this process was materially identical to Google’s here. See Reddick, 900 F.3d at 637. USCA11 Case: 24-13226 Document: 55-1 Date Filed: 07/09/2026 Page: 18 of 37 18 Opinion of the Court 24-13226 United States v. Lowers, 170 F.4th 134, 156 (4th Cir. 2026); United States v. Wilson, 13 F.4th 961, 971 (9th Cir. 2021). Although their approaches differ at the margins, all three courts have conceived of a digital file as akin to a “container[]” or a “sealed manila envelope” whose precise contents can’t really be known until a human opens it. Lowers, 170 F.4th at 149 & n.9; Maher, 120 F.4th at 317 (analo- gizing digital files found on two separate email accounts to two dif- ferent sealed containers in the physical world); Wilson, 13 F.4th at 973, 977 n.13 (emphasizing that the image files were “unopened”). They have also emphasized that because Fourth Amendment rights are “personal,” a private search that uses information gleaned from a file that was once in the possession of a third party can’t defeat the suspect’s privacy interests, even in the very same file. Lowers, 170 F.4th at 153–54; Maher, 120 F.4th at 319; Wilson, 13 F.4th at 975. 3 We agree with the Fifth and Sixth Circuits, and thus hold that Google’s application of its hash-matching protocol to Brillhart’s file qualifies as a valid private search. Through hash matching, Google simply used a computer to save one flesh-and- blood individual the trouble of having to confirm what another (or perhaps even the same) flesh-and-blood individual had already con- cluded. It’s worth noting at the outset that, at least as Google em- ploys it, hash-value matching doesn’t replace human review en- tirely. Rather, at step one, so to speak, an individual Google em- ployee reviews a file, determines that it depicts child pornography, USCA11 Case: 24-13226 Document: 55-1 Date Filed: 07/09/2026 Page: 19 of 37 24-13226 Opinion of the Court 19 assigns it a hash value and classification, and enters it into the com- pany’s database. See Tr. of Mot. to Suppress Hr’g at 76, 101. It is only at step two that the automated hash match occurs: A com- puter compares a new file’s hash value against those in the database known to depict child pornography and, if (but only if) there’s a match, reports the new file as child pornography. Id. at 124. 4 Under Supreme Court precedent, the controlling question is whether there is “virtual certainty” that law enforcement will find “nothing else of significance” in its own review that hadn’t already been revealed by the private search—here, that the digital file de- picts child pornography. Jacobsen, 466 U.S. at 119. We are satisfied that the search at issue here satisfies that test. To be sure, a degree of apprehension is understandable; to date, the norm has been stem-to-stern human review. In point of fact, though, a computer comparing digital hash values is almost surely less likely to slip up and mismatch two images than is a hu- man being eyeballing them. After all, “[m]ost people who view images do not use a magnifying glass to undertake a pixel-by-pixel inspection” of the sort that hash matching inherently entails. Mil- ler, 982 F.3d at 430. 4 As there was prior human review of the file at issue in this case, we needn’t decide whether the Fourth Amendment requires that a qualifying private search entail human involvement. USCA11 Case: 24-13226 Document: 55-1 Date Filed: 07/09/2026 Page: 20 of 37 20 Opinion of the Court 24-13226 And to be clear, hash matching’s “near-perfect accuracy,” id. at 418, isn’t just theoretical; uncontested record evidence demon- strates it. As already noted, at the suppression hearing in this case, an e-crimes investigator described a hash value as “a unique digital signature”—meaning, she said, that “if two files had the same hash value, they’re the same file.” Tr. of Mot. to Suppress Hr’g at 7, 20. The flip side, she said, is also true: There is no “reason why [two files] would have different hash values if they’re the same file.” Id. at 73. Importantly, she distinguished a hash value from a file name: Unlike a unique hash value, she explained, “we could have ten im- ages that have the same filename that are all different images.” Id. A custodian of records at Google later confirmed that a hash value is a “digital fingerprint,” widely used to “fight online [child porn] across industry.” Id. at 101, 121. There was no evidence to the contrary. 5 Even beyond the record in this case, there is a broad consen- sus among courts that have considered the issue that hash match- ing is a practically fool-proof way to confirm that two files are in- deed one and the same. In Miller, for instance, the Sixth Circuit pointed to an article published by the Federal Judicial Center, which confirms that hash values are “so distinctive that the chance that any two data sets will have the same one, no matter how sim- ilar they appear, is less than one in one billion.” Miller, 982 F.3d at 5 In this sense, our record is distinguishable from that the Fourth Circuit con- fronted in Lowers; there, “no record evidence” supported the finding that hash- matching technology was “exceedingly reliable.” Lowers, 170 F.4th at 148. USCA11 Case: 24-13226 Document: 55-1 Date Filed: 07/09/2026 Page: 21 of 37 24-13226 Opinion of the Court 21 430 (quoting Barbara J. Rothstein et al., Managing Discovery of Elec- tronic Information: A Pocket Guide for Judges 38 (2d ed. Federal Judicial Center 2012)). That court also noted a manual published by a state government agency stating that “[t]h