Opinion ID: 6335456
Heading Depth: 6
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Private party’s intent

Text: In analyzing the second requirement—the private party’s intent in searching—we look to whether it acted to “assist law enforcement efforts,” or whether it had a “legitimate, independent motivation to further its own ends.” Cleaveland, 38 F.3d at 1094 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Under our precedent, a private party’s interest in preventing criminal activity, on its own, is not a legitimate, independent motivation to search. Reed, 15 F.3d at 932 (“[I]f crime prevention could be an independent private motive, searches by private parties would never 24 UNITED STATES V. ROSENOW trigger Fourth Amendment protection.”); but see Cameron, 699 F.3d at 638 (“It is certainly the case that combating child pornography is a government interest. However, this does not mean that Yahoo cannot voluntarily choose to have the same interest.”). However, as long as a legitimate, independent motivation is established, “that motivation is not negated by any dual motive to detect or prevent crime or assist the police, or by the presence of the police nearby during the search.” Cleaveland, 38 F.3d at 1094. Here, the record establishes that Yahoo and Facebook investigated Rosenow’s accounts to further their own legitimate, independent motivations. See Young, 153 F.3d at 1080–81. As the district court found, both companies have legitimate business reasons for purging child pornography and exploitation from their platforms, and they acted in furtherance of those reasons when they investigated Rosenow. Yahoo’s Director of Threat Investigations and Intelligence testified that it is “very bad for [Yahoo’s] brand” if its services are viewed as “a haven for child pornography or child exploitation or sex trafficking.” He also stated that “[r]idding our products and services of child abuse images is critically important to protecting our users, our products, our brand, and our business interests.” Finally, he stated that Yahoo has a direct financial interest in keeping child pornography off its platforms because Yahoo does not want to lose advertising opportunities or be blocked from app stores. A Facebook analyst familiar with that company’s internal search policies likewise explained that Facebook “has a business purpose in keeping its platform safe and free from harmful content and conduct . . . that sexually exploits children,” which is why Facebook prohibits “content that sexually exploits or endangers children.” She testified that UNITED STATES V. ROSENOW 25 Facebook’s policy of conducting limited review of accounts in cases indicating child exploitation is “to keep [its] platform safe and so users will continue to use [its] platform.” This case is analogous to Cleaveland, where police waited while an electricity company’s employee investigated the meter of a customer that was suspected of diverting power. 38 F.3d at 1093–94. The employee asked the police to accompany him to the customer’s home because of safety concerns and, “if his inspection uncovered the likelihood of a power diversion, he wanted the police to be able to get a warrant to search the house to confirm the power theft.” Id. at 1093. Although the police used evidence from the company’s search to obtain a warrant, we found insufficient government action to implicate the Fourth Amendment because, in part, the motive “to recover money for [the electricity company’s] loss of power” was a “legitimate, independent motive apart from” any interest in “assist[ing] the police in capturing the power thief.” Id. at 1094. So, too, the ESPs’ desire to purge child pornography from their platforms and enforce the terms of their user agreements is a legitimate, independent motive apart from any interest that the ESPs had in assisting the government in apprehending Rosenow. In so holding, we again note that our decision is consistent with each of our sister circuits to have considered this issue. See Miller, 982 F.3d at 419 (“Companies like Google have business reasons to make these efforts to remove child pornography from their systems.”); Ringland, 966 F.3d at 736 (“Google did not act as a government agent because it scanned its users’ emails volitionally and out of its own private business interests. Google did not become a government agent merely because 26 UNITED STATES V. ROSENOW it had a mutual interest in eradicating child pornography from its platform.”); Cameron, 699 F.3d at 638. The dissent argues that Yahoo did not have an independent motivation for searching Rosenow’s account because, by failing to preserve images sent via its Messenger service, Yahoo could not close the account under its user agreement and, therefore, depended on law enforcement to further its interests. Dissent at 40–42. We disagree. First, it was not a foregone conclusion at the outset of Yahoo’s search that it would not find any images that would permit it to close Rosenow’s account without law enforcement involvement. While Yahoo did not retain images sent through its Messenger service during the relevant period, it did retain its users’ Messenger profile pictures and images sent by users through its email service. Yahoo’s searches included these locations where images were retained. In fact, during the search activity that identified Rosenow, Yahoo found prohibited childexploitation images in other users’ email accounts and Messenger profile pictures, and it disabled those users’ accounts without any involvement by law enforcement. Second, a private party’s otherwise legitimate, independent motivation is not rendered invalid just because law enforcement assistance may further its interests. 5 5 In arguing otherwise, the dissent relies primarily on Ferguson, 532 U.S. at 82–84. However, Ferguson concerned warrantless searches by state actors under the “special needs” exception to the warrant requirement. There, a state hospital adopted a “Management of Drug Abuse During Pregnancy” policy and attempted “to use the threat of arrest and prosecution in order to force women into [substance abuse] treatment.” Id. at 71–72, 84. Law enforcement had “extensive involvement” in developing the policy. Id. at 84. Of course, under such UNITED STATES V. ROSENOW 27 Cleaveland demonstrates this point. While the electric company had a legitimate business interest in preventing power theft, it specifically requested that law enforcement be present when it inspected its customer’s meter in part because it “wanted the police to be able to get a warrant and search the house to confirm the power theft.” 38 F.3d at 1093 (emphasis added). This suggests that further action beyond its inspection of the meter was needed to either prevent further theft, recover against the customer, or both. Had the electric company been able to accomplish its business objective without assistance, it would not have needed law enforcement at the ready to get a warrant and search the customer’s home. Likewise, in Miller the private actor had an independent interest in recovering his stolen trailer, but he relied on law enforcement to act after he entered the defendant’s property and located his trailer. 6 688 F.2d at 657–58. Our conclusion is also consistent with Reed because there the hotel owner expressly admitted that his only circumstances, the state may not rely on the “ultimate goal” of substance abuse treatment to justify warrantless searches. But Ferguson is flatly distinguishable from this case where a private actor is searching its own platform consistent with the terms of its user contract. 6 Even if were we to accept the dissent’s position that reliance on government assistance invalidates an otherwise legitimate, independent motivation, law enforcement intervention was not Yahoo’s only available means for preventing Rosenow from continuing to engage in prohibited conduct. Yahoo’s Director of Threat Investigations and Intelligence testified that the company has several ways to prevent child exploitation on its platform: deactivating accounts; making law enforcement referrals for arrests; and pursuing civil remedies, including lawsuits and “direct requests that [it] serve[s] via process servers to get people to stop engaging in activities.” Thus, Yahoo was not dependent on the government to further its goals. 28 UNITED STATES V. ROSENOW motivation for searching the defendant’s room was to “help police gather proof that [the defendant] was using his room to deal narcotics.” 15 F.3d at 931. Unlike in Cleaveland and Miller, the hotel owner had no independent motivation for searching his customer’s room. However, in invalidating the search in that case, we indicated that if the hotel owner had entered the room for an independent purpose—such as ensuring that hotel property had not been damaged—and had not searched “beyond what was required to protect hotel property,” the search may not have been improper. See id. at 931. For these reasons, we conclude that there was insufficient governmental involvement in Yahoo’s and Facebook’s private searches of Rosenow’s accounts to trigger Fourth Amendment protection. 2. Did the government’s preservation requests and subpoenas violate Rosenow’s right to privacy? Rosenow also argues that he had a right to privacy in his digital data and that the government’s preservation requests and subpoenas, submitted without a warrant, violated the Fourth Amendment. We disagree. a. Were the preservation requests unconstitutional seizures? Acting pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 2703(f), which requires an ESP “to preserve records and other evidence in its possession pending the issuance of a court order or other process,” the government directed Yahoo on three separate occasions to preserve records related to Rosenow’s private communications. Rosenow contends that these requests were an unconstitutional seizure of his property. UNITED STATES V. ROSENOW 29 A “seizure” of property requires “some meaningful interference [by the government,] with an individual’s possessory interests in [his] property.” Jacobsen, 466 U.S. at 113. Here, the preservation requests themselves, which applied only retrospectively, did not meaningfully interfere with Rosenow’s possessory interests in his digital data because they did not prevent Rosenow from accessing his account. Nor did they provide the government with access to any of Rosenow’s digital information without further legal process. It also is worth noting that Rosenow consented to the ESPs honoring preservation requests from law enforcement under the ESPs’ terms of use. Thus, we agree with the district court that these requests did not amount to an unreasonable seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment.