I would say you search the computers, but do this in a very timely manor so that you do not have to involve employers and social services.
These searches should take minutes or hours, not months, and shouldn’t ruin people’s lives if they are innocent.
Yes. The searches are not designed to ruin anyone's life but informing other parties, like what happened in this article, is sometimes necessary and and can have life ruining consequences even when entirely innocent. Things could leak out from the school to parents, to other work colleagues, limit career progression, etc. These leaks may even be intentional when stupid people are involved. Doing the searches quicker and being innocent or not doesn't help avoid either of the below (from the article) from happening:
> The police needed to unlock Matthew's work laptop, which was encrypted. He had to tell his boss about the case in order to get the decryption key.
> And the police had also informed social services and the children's school about the investigation, meaning Kate was suspended from her role as a governor there.
The first one could be unavoidable. The second one is technically avoidable but it is going to happen (in UK society, at least).
It could definitely have avoided the second.
I think there is a moral duty to carry out investigations in a way that protects the lives, reputations and livelihoods of the innocent, and this example has fallen short of that in my opinion (although a reasonable person could disagree).
This is the bit I disagree with personally, as I think it conflicts with 'innocent until proven guilty' when a person can be removed from their position and have their reputation destroyed by the police without sufficient evidence to convict (remember - no charge was ever made from the police).
It's pretty feasible to do an initial scan of a few devices within a few hours - and if you don't find enough evidence after a few hours of looking then IMO you don't have enough evidence to ruin someone's life (go get more evidence first in that case!).
The 'blast zone' of this investigation was ultimately two innocent people's reputations ruined in an attempt to find one guilty person (who wasn't found).
(Again, reasonable people will disagree on how far an investigation should be able to go prior to charge - my own view is clearly more on the 'protect the innocent, even if it means investigation is harder and a few baddies escape justice' side than some others might be!)