Opinion ID: 1035927
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The constitutional question

Text: The Government and the ACLU focus their analysis of the constitutionality of the SCA as applied to historical cell site data on distinct questions. The ACLU focuses on what information cell site data reveals – location information – and proceeds to analyze the § 2703(d) orders under the Supreme Court’s precedents on tracking devices. In contrast, the Government focuses on who is gathering the data – private cell service providers, not government officers – and analyzes the provision under the Court’s business records cases. The ACLU contends that individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their location information when they are tracked in a space, like the home, that is traditionally protected or when they are tracked for a longer period 12 Case: 11-20884 Document: 00512325280 Page: 13 Date Filed: 07/30/2013 No. 11-20884 of time and in greater detail than society would expect.9 The ACLU relies on the concurrences in United States v. Jones, 132 S. Ct. 945 (2012), which concluded that prolonged GPS monitoring of a vehicle could constitute a search, id. at 964 (Alito, J., concurring in the judgment) (joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kagan); see id. at 955 (Sotomayor, J., concurring) (expressly agreeing with Justice Alito’s concurrence on this point).10 The ACLU points out that individuals are only in vehicles for discrete periods, but most people carry cell phones on their person at all times, making the tracking more detailed and invasive. The Government responds that cell site data are only collected when a call is made, which is a discrete event, just like a car ride. Moreover, the Government argues that cell site information is less precise than GPS location information. It contends that these data are not sufficiently accurate to reveal when someone is in a private location such as a home. But the ACLU points out that the reason that the Government seeks such information is to locate or track a suspect in a criminal investigation. The data must be precise enough to be useful to the Government, which would suggest that, at least in some cases, it can narrow someone’s location to a fairly small area. See FCC Commercial Mobile Services, 47 C.F.R. § 20.18(h)(1) (2012) (requiring cell 9 The ACLU argues that the extended time period – sixty days – for which the Government sought historical cell site records contravenes privacy expectations. But the Supreme Court has upheld a court order for records that included three monthly statements, or roughly ninety days of records. United States v. Miller, 425 U.S. 435, 438 (1976). 10 The ACLU, as well as the magistrate judge’s opinion, Historical Cell Site Data, 747 F. Supp. 2d at 841-43, also cite the protections in the Wireless Communication and Public Safety Act of 1999 as evidence that society recognizes a privacy interest in location information, though the ACLU recognizes that, under Supreme Court precedent, statutory protections are not determinative. See City of Ontario v. Quon, 130 S. Ct. 2619, 2632 (2010) (“Respondents point to no authority for the proposition that the existence of statutory protection renders a search per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment. And the precedents counsel otherwise.”). But the SCA is a statute as well, and there is little reason to think that absence of statutory protection for a certain type of information is any less evidence of society’s lack of a privacy interest in that information than presence of legal protection is evidence of such an interest. 13 Case: 11-20884 Document: 00512325280 Page: 14 Date Filed: 07/30/2013 No. 11-20884 phone carriers to have, by 2012, the ability to locate phones within 100 meters of 67% of calls and 300 meters for 95% of calls for network based calls, and to be able to locate phones within 50 meters of 67% of calls and 150 meters of 95% of calls for hand-set based calls). And the Supreme Court held in United States v. Karo that without a warrant the Government cannot determine by means of a beeper whether a particular article (in that case a cannister of ether) is in an individual’s home at a particular time. 468 U.S. 705, 719 (1984). In response, the Government argues that a pen register can similarly locate someone to his home. If a person makes a call from his home landline, he must be located in his home at the landline’s receiver. Yet the Court in Smith v. Maryland nevertheless sanctioned the warrantless use of pen registers, installed by the phone company at the request of police, to record the numbers dialed from particular landlines. 442 U.S. 735, 745-46 (1979). This argument highlights the difference between the Government’s and the ACLU’s approaches to this issue. Both Karo and Smith involved the Government’s acquisition of information about the interior of a home: that a particular canister was located in the home or that a person was calling particular numbers from a phone in the home. But in Karo (as in Jones), the Government was the one collecting and recording that information. And this is the distinction on which the Government’s affirmative argument turns. The Government recognizes that “[w]hat a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection.” Katz, 389 U.S. at 351; see also id. at 350-51 (“[T]he Fourth Amendment cannot be translated into a general constitutional ‘right to privacy.’ That Amendment protects individual privacy against certain kinds of governmental intrusion . . . . But the protection of a person’s general right to privacy – his right to be let alone by other people – is, like the protection of his 14 Case: 11-20884 Document: 00512325280 Page: 15 Date Filed: 07/30/2013 No. 11-20884 property and of his very life, left largely to the law of the individual States.” (emphasis added)). Therefore, the Government, when determining whether an intrusion constitutes a search or seizure, draws a line based on whether it is the Government collecting the information or requiring a third party to collect and store it, or whether it is a third party, of its own accord and for its own purposes, recording the information. Where a third party collects information in the first instance for its own purposes, the Government claims that it can obtain this information later with a § 2703(d) order, just as it can subpoena other records of a private entity. Compare Smith, 442 U.S. at 743 (finding significant that “the phone company does in fact record this information for a variety of legitimate business purposes” (emphasis added)), with Jones, 132 S. Ct. at 964 (Alito, J., concurring in the judgment) (expressing concern over the application of existing Fourth Amendment doctrine to “the use of GPS tracking technology for law enforcement purposes” (emphasis added)). We agree. This question of who is recording an individual’s information initially is key because: [T]he individual must occasionally transact business with other people. When he does so, he leaves behind, as evidence of his activity, the records and recollections of others. He cannot expect that these activities are his private affair. To the extent an individual knowingly exposes his activities to third parties, he surrenders Fourth Amendment protections, and, if the Government is subsequently called upon to investigate his activities for possible violations of the law, it is free to seek out these third parties, to inspect their records, and to probe their recollections for evidence. Reporters Comm. for Freedom of Press v. Am. Tel. & Tel. Co., 593 F.2d 1030, 1043 (D.C. Cir. 1978). Moreover, “[t]he fortuity of whether or not the [third party] in fact elects to make a quasi-permanent record” of information conveyed to it “does not . . . make any constitutional difference.” Smith, 442 U.S. at 745. 15 Case: 11-20884 Document: 00512325280 Page: 16 Date Filed: 07/30/2013 No. 11-20884 The third party can store data disclosed to it at its discretion. And once an individual exposes his information to a third party, it can be used for any purpose, as “[i]t is established that, when a person communicates information to a third party even on the understanding that the communication is confidential, he cannot object if the third party conveys that information or records thereof to law enforcement authorities.” SEC v. Jerry T. O’Brien, Inc., 467 U.S. 735, 743 (1984) (emphasis added).11 The Government does concede that the subpoenaed third party must have possession of – the right to control – the records before officials can require it to turn them over. The Government, therefore, distinguishes cases where a landlord or hotel manager merely has the right to enter the apartment or room of another. The Government acknowledges that “the government may not subpoena the landlord to produce the tenant’s personal papers from her apartment.” However, it contrasts these situations from the one presented in United States v. Miller, 425 U.S. 435 (1976). In Miller, the Court rejected a bank depositor’s Fourth Amendment challenge to a subpoena of bank records because, as the bank was a party to the transactions, the records belonged to the bank. Id. at 440-41 (“[T]he documents subpoenaed here are not respondent’s private 11 Although the ACLU contends that this sort of compulsory process requires notice and an opportunity to litigate the order’s validity before it is executed, the Government notes that it is the party who owns the records, not the party whose information is recorded, that has this right to challenge the order. See Jerry T. O’Brien, 467 U.S. at 743 (concluding that Supreme Court precedents “disable respondents from arguing that notice of subpoenas issued to third parties is necessary to allow a target to prevent an unconstitutional search or seizure of his papers”). The SCA provides that “[a] governmental entity receiving records or information [of non-content data] is not required to provide notice to a subscriber or customer” before or after government officials obtain this information. § 2703(c)(3). Insofar as the ACLU believes that the SCA is constitutionally problematic because it does not require these officials to ever disclose to the subscriber that they sought and obtained his non-content records – whether or not information gleaned from the records led to a criminal prosecution, cf. Jones, 132 S. Ct. at 964 (showing special concern for situations where government officials “secretly monitor” individuals (emphasis added)) – we note that nothing in the non-content records provisions of the SCA prevents cell service providers from informing their subscribers of such government requests. 16 Case: 11-20884 Document: 00512325280 Page: 17 Date Filed: 07/30/2013 No. 11-20884 papers. . . . [R]espondent can assert neither ownership nor possession. Instead, these are the business records of the bank[]. . . . [They] pertain to transactions to which the bank was itself a party.” (citation and internal quotation marks omitted)). This qualification that the right to possession hinges on whether the third party created the record to memorialize its business transaction with the target, rather than simply recording its observation of a transaction between two independent parties, recently gained context and support from a case decided by the Sixth Circuit. In that case, United States v. Warshak, the court of appeals held that the “government may not compel a commercial [internet service provider] to turn over the contents of a subscriber’s emails without first obtaining a warrant based on probable cause.” 631 F.3d 266, 288 (6th Cir. 2010). The court reasoned that the emails were communications between two subscribers, not communications between the service provider and a subscriber that would qualify as business records. The provider was merely the “intermediary.” Id. at 286. Defining business records as records of transactions to which the recordkeeper is a party also fits well with the historical and statutory distinction between communications content and addressing information. See United States v. Forrester, 512 F.3d 500, 511 (9th Cir. 2008) (“In a line of cases dating back to the nineteenth century, the Supreme Court has held that the government cannot engage in a warrantless search of the contents of sealed mail, but can observe whatever information people put on the outside of mail, because that information is voluntarily transmitted to third parties.”) (collecting cases); see, e.g., 18 U.S.C. § 2703(b)-(c). Communications content, such as the contents of letters, phone calls, and emails, which are not directed to a business, but simply sent via that business, are generally protected. However, addressing information, which the business needs to route those communications 17 Case: 11-20884 Document: 00512325280 Page: 18 Date Filed: 07/30/2013 No. 11-20884 appropriately and efficiently are not. See Smith, 442 U.S. at 741 (finding significant that pen registers, unlike the listening device employed in Katz, “do not acquire the contents of communications” and do not require a warrant); Forrester, 512 F.3d at 511 (“The government’s surveillance of e-mail addresses also may be technologically sophisticated, but it is conceptually indistinguishable from government surveillance of physical mail. . . . E-mail, like physical mail, has an outside address ‘visible’ to the third-party carriers that transmit it to its intended location, and also a package of content that the sender presumes will be read only by the intended recipient.”). Under this framework, cell site information is clearly a business record. The cell service provider collects and stores historical cell site data for its own business purposes, perhaps to monitor or optimize service on its network or to accurately bill its customers for the segments of its network that they use. The Government does not require service providers to record this information or store it. The providers control what they record and how long these records are retained. The Government has neither “required [n]or persuaded” providers to keep historical cell site records. Jones, 132 S. Ct. at 961 (Alito, J., concurring in the judgment). In the case of such historical cell site information, the Government merely comes in after the fact and asks a provider to turn over records the provider has already created. Moreover, these are the providers’ own records of transactions to which it is a party. The caller is not conveying location information to anyone other than his service provider. He is sending information so that the provider can perform the service for which he pays it: to connect his call. And the historical cell site information reveals his location information for addressing purposes, not the 18 Case: 11-20884 Document: 00512325280 Page: 19 Date Filed: 07/30/2013 No. 11-20884 contents of his calls.12 The provider uses this data to properly route his call, while the person he is calling does not receive this information. The ACLU points out that this conveyance of location information to the service provider nevertheless must be voluntary in order for the cell phone owner to relinquish his privacy interest in the data. The ACLU asserts that here it is not. According to the ACLU, “[w]hen a cell phone user makes or receives a call, there is no indication to the user that making or receiving that call will . . . locate the caller.” A user cannot voluntarily convey something which he does not know he has. The Government disputes the assertion that cell phone users do not voluntarily convey location information. It contends that the users know that they convey information about their location to their service providers when they make a call and that they voluntarily continue to make such calls. We agree. In Smith, the Supreme Court recognized that: All telephone users realize that they must “convey” phone numbers to the telephone company, since it is through telephone company switching equipment that their calls are completed. All subscribers realize, moreover, that the phone company has facilities for making 12 The Ninth Circuit has similarly concluded that “e-mail to/from addresses and IP addresses constitute addressing information and do not necessarily reveal any more about the underlying contents of communication than do phone numbers.” Forrester, 512 F.3d at 510. It noted that: Like IP addresses, certain phone numbers may strongly indicate the underlying contents of the communication; for example, the government would know that a person who dialed the phone number of a chemicals company or a gun shop was likely seeking information about chemicals or firearms. Further, when an individual dials a pre-recorded information or subject-specific line, such as sports scores, lottery results or phone sex lines, the phone number may even show that the caller had access to specific content information. Nonetheless, the Court in Smith and Katz drew a clear line between unprotected addressing information and protected content information that the government did not cross here. Id. These observations are equally applicable to historical cell site data. 19 Case: 11-20884 Document: 00512325280 Page: 20 Date Filed: 07/30/2013 No. 11-20884 permanent records of the numbers they dial, for they see a list of their long-distance (toll) calls on their monthly bills. 442 U.S. at 742. Furthermore, it observed that “[m]ost phone books tell subscribers, on a page entitled ‘Consumer Information,’ that the company ‘can frequently help in identifying to the authorities the origin of unwelcome and troublesome calls.’” Id. at 742-43. A cell service subscriber, like a telephone user, understands that his cell phone must send a signal to a nearby cell tower in order to wirelessly connect his call. See United States v. Madison, No. 11-60285-CR, 2012 WL 3095357, at  (S.D. Fla. July 30, 2012) (unpublished) (“[C]ell-phone users have knowledge that when they place or receive calls, they, through their cell phones, are transmitting signals to the nearest cell tower, and, thus, to their communications service providers.”). Cell phone users recognize that, if their phone cannot pick up a signal (or “has no bars”), they are out of the range of their service provider’s network of towers. And they realize that, if many customers in an area attempt to make calls at the same time, they may overload the network’s local towers, and the calls may not go through. Even if this cell phone-to-tower signal transmission was not “common knowledge,” California v. Greenwood, 486 U.S. 35, 40 (1988), the Government also has presented evidence that cell service providers’ and subscribers’ contractual terms of service and providers’ privacy policies expressly state that a provider uses a subscriber’s location information to route his cell phone calls. In addition, these documents inform subscribers that the providers not only use the information, but collect it. See also Madison, 2012 WL 3095357, at  (“Moreover, the cell-phone-using public knows that communications companies make and maintain permanent records regarding cell-phone usage, as many different types of billing plans are available . . . . Some plans also impose additional charges when a cell phone is used outside its ‘home area’ (known commonly as ‘roaming’ charges). In order 20 Case: 11-20884 Document: 00512325280 Page: 21 Date Filed: 07/30/2013 No. 11-20884 to bill in these different ways, communications companies must maintain the requisite data, including cell-tower information.”). Finally, they make clear that providers will turn over these records to government officials if served with a court order. Cell phone users, therefore, understand that their service providers record their location information when they use their phones at least to the same extent that the landline users in Smith understood that the phone company recorded the numbers they dialed. Their use of their phones, moreover, is entirely voluntary. See United States v. Skinner, 690 F.3d 772, 777 (6th Cir. 2012) (“There is no Fourth Amendment violation because Skinner did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the data given off by his voluntarily procured pay-as-you-go cell phone.”). The Government does not require a member of the public to own or carry a phone. As the days of monopoly phone companies are past, the Government does not require him to obtain his cell phone service from a particular service provider that keeps historical cell site records for its subscribers, either. And it does not require him to make a call, let alone to make a call at a specific location. Nevertheless, the ACLU argues that, while an individual’s use of his phone may be voluntary, he does not voluntarily convey his cell site information because he does not directly convey it to his service provider. The only information he directly conveys is the number he dials. See In re Application of the United States, 620 F.3d at 317 (“[W]hen a cell phone user makes a call, the only information that is voluntarily and knowingly conveyed to the phone company is the number that is dialed.”). This crabbed understanding of voluntary conveyance would lead to absurd results. For example, if a user programmed a contact’s telephone number into his phone’s speed dial memory, he would only need to dial the speed dial reference number to make the call. Would that mean that the Government would be unable to obtain the contact’s 21 Case: 11-20884 Document: 00512325280 Page: 22 Date Filed: 07/30/2013 No. 11-20884 actual telephone number from his service provider? Clearly not. The contact’s telephone number is necessary for the service provider to connect the call; the user is aware of this fact; therefore, he is aware that he is conveying that information to the service provider and voluntarily does so when he makes the call.13 A similar analysis for cell site information leads to the conclusion that a user voluntarily conveys such information when he places a call, even though he does not directly inform his service provider of the location of the nearest cell phone tower. Because a cell phone user makes a choice to get a phone, to select a particular service provider, and to make a call, and because he knows that the call conveys cell site information, the provider retains this information, and the provider will turn it over to the police if they have a court order, he voluntarily conveys his cell site data each time he makes a call. Finally, the ACLU argues that advances in technology have changed society’s reasonable expectations of privacy in information exposed to third parties. See Jones, 132 S. Ct. 963-64 (Alito, J., concurring in the judgment) (“In the pre-computer age, the greatest protections of privacy were neither constitutional nor statutory, but practical. . . . Devices like the one used in the present case, however, make long-term monitoring relatively easy and cheap.”); see also id. at 957 (Sotomayor, J., concurring). We agree that technological 13 In an analogous context, when a customer makes a credit card purchase at a store or restaurant, he does not directly convey the location of the transaction to his credit card company. Nevertheless, law enforcement officers can obtain his credit card records from the company with a subpoena, see, e.g., United States v. Maturo, 982 F.2d 57, 59 (2d Cir. 1992) (DEA agents obtained a subpoena for the credit card records of an investigatory target.), and use them to track his location, see, e.g., United States v. Kragness, 830 F.2d 842, 865 (8th Cir. 1987) (“The government introduced credit-card records and an airline-ticket stub which show that [the defendant] traveled from Minneapolis/St. Paul to Miami on August 16, 1980.”); see also 12 U.S.C. §§ 3402, 3407, 3409 (prescribing that federal officials can obtain an individual’s financial records, such as credit card statements, pursuant to judicial subpoena served on his financial institution if “there is reason to believe that the records sought are relevant to a legitimate law enforcement inquiry,” and, subject to certain exceptions, the individual has notice and an opportunity to object to the disclosure before it occurs). 22 Case: 11-20884 Document: 00512325280 Page: 23 Date Filed: 07/30/2013 No. 11-20884 changes can alter societal expectations of privacy. See id. at 962 (Alito, J., concurring) (“Dramatic technological change may lead to periods in which popular expectations are in flux and may ultimately produce significant changes in popular attitudes. New technology may provide increased convenience or security at the expense of privacy, and many people may find the tradeoff worthwhile. And even if the public does not welcome the diminution of privacy that new technology entails, they may eventually reconcile themselves to this development as inevitable.”). At the same time, “[l]aw enforcement tactics must be allowed to advance with technological changes, in order to prevent criminals from circumventing the justice system.” Skinner, 690 F.3d at 778 (citing United States v. Knotts, 460 U.S. 276, 284 (1983)). Therefore, “[i]n circumstances involving dramatic technological change, the best solution to privacy concerns may be legislative. A legislative body is well situated to gauge changing public attitudes, to draw detailed lines, and to balance privacy and public safety in a comprehensive way.” Jones, 132 S. Ct. at 964 (Alito, J., concurring in the judgment). Congress has crafted such a legislative solution in the SCA. The statute conforms to existing Supreme Court Fourth Amendment precedent. This precedent, as it now stands, does not recognize a situation where a conventional order for a third party’s voluntarily created business records transforms into a Fourth Amendment search or seizure when the records cover more than some specified time period or shed light on a target’s activities in an area traditionally protected from governmental intrusion. We decline to create a new rule to hold that Congress’s balancing of privacy and safety is unconstitutional.14 14 The Government also argues on appeal that the district court erred by overruling the Government’s objections to the magistrate judge’s judicially-noticed findings of fact. Because we hold that the magistrate judge had no discretion to deny the Government’s application for a § 2703(d) order, we need not reach the issue of whether its judicial notice of facts was improper. 23 Case: 11-20884 Document: 00512325280 Page: 24 Date Filed: 07/30/2013 No. 11-20884 We understand that cell phone users may reasonably want their location information to remain private, just as they may want their trash, placed curbside in opaque bags, Greenwood, 486 U.S. at 40-41, or the view of their property from 400 feet above the ground, Florida v. Riley, 488 U.S. 445, 451 (1989), to remain so. But the recourse for these desires is in the market or the political process: in demanding that service providers do away with such records (or anonymize them) or in lobbying elected representatives to enact statutory protections. The Fourth Amendment, safeguarded by the courts, protects only reasonable expectations of privacy. Recognizing that technology is changing rapidly, we decide only the narrow issue before us. Section 2703(d) orders to obtain historical cell site information for specified cell phones at the points at which the user places and terminates a call are not categorically unconstitutional. We do not address orders requesting data from all phones that use a tower during a particular interval, orders requesting cell site information for the recipient of a call from the cell phone specified in the order, or orders requesting location information for the duration of the calls or when the phone is idle (assuming the data are available for these periods). Nor do we address situations where the Government surreptitiously installs spyware on a target’s phone or otherwise hijacks the phone’s GPS, with or without the service provider’s help.