In the United States the legal maxim limiting what can be searched as a part of a search warrant is referred to as the Sugar Bowl rule. It is states as “if you are looking for stolen televisions, you cannot look in sugar bowls.”
Officers cannot search a space in which the item(s) specified on the search warrant could not possibly fit. A stolen television could not fit in a sugar bowl.
However, as others have eluded to, if some item on the approved warrant is sufficiently small or divisible, then officers could conceivably search many places. If the warrant specifies cocaine as a target of the search then of course some could fit in the proverbial sugar bowl and thus the sugar bowl could be searched.
I guess the next question is - if you are looking for stolen cars, and wish to include burglary tools for stealing cars ( the metal strip for opening doors, items for jumping ignitions and wrecking steering locks) do you have to demonstrate to the judge how you know some such tools were involved and why they would be in the house? Does the judge issuing the warrant say “how do you know master keys were involved?”
I assume some judges might rubber stamp the warrant, but then I assume an excessively broad warrant is more easily challenged.
Judges pretty much just approve any search warrant request. So the claim that it’s proof of anything is just absurd. Next someone will say that all the raids on the wrong addresses are because the people must be bad guys to live near criminals or at an address that is similar to a suspect. Then you go and get search warrants based on the claims of known lying criminals.
