Opinion ID: 170424
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: ECPA/State Law and Fourth Amendment

Text: Perrine argues that compliance with 18 U.S.C. § 2703(d) and 18 Pa.C.S.A. § 5743(d) is akin to a Terry stop within the scope of the Fourth Amendment and suppression is available to remedy violations. Appellant's Br. at 7. Section 2703 is the core provision of the ECPA, and it authorizes the government to require disclosure of stored communications and transaction records by third-party service providers. Under 18 U.S.C. § 2703(c)(2), [a] provider of electronic communication service or remote computing service shall disclose to a governmental entity the . . . name; . . . address; . . . telephone or instrument number or other subscriber number or identity, including any temporarily assigned network address . . . of a subscriber to or customer of such service. . . . 18 U.S.C. § 2703(c)(2). Section 2703(d) specifies that [a] court order for disclosure under subsection . . . (c) . . . shall issue only if the governmental entity offers specific and articulable facts showing that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the . . . records or other information sought[ ] are relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation. 18 U.S.C. § 2703(d). [4] Perrine argues that suppression, an appropriate remedy for an impermissible Terry stop, [5] is an available remedy for a violation of the ECPA. However, section 2708 of the ECPA specifically states that [t]he remedies and sanctions described in this chapter are the only judicial remedies and sanctions for nonconstitutional violations of this chapter. 18 U.S.C. § 2708. Section 2707, in turn, describes remedies for violations of the Act as including civil actions for violators other than the United States and administrative discipline against federal employees in certain circumstances. 18 U.S.C. § 2707. Thus, violations of the ECPA do not warrant exclusion of evidence. See United States v. Steiger, 318 F.3d 1039, 1049 (11th Cir. 2003); United States v. Smith, 155 F.3d 1051, 1056 (9th Cir.1998); Bansal v. Russ, 513 F.Supp.2d 264, 282-83 (E.D.Pa.2007); United States v. Sherr, 400 F.Supp.2d 843, 848 (D.Md.2005); United States v. Kennedy, 81 F.Supp.2d 1103, 1110 (D.Kan.2000). [6] Perrine next argues that, in any event, the government violated the ECPA and the Pennsylvania law by failing to present specific and articulable facts in support of its applications for court orders requiring Yahoo! and Cox to reveal Perrine's IP address and name, and that the government therefore used illegally obtained information in support of its search warrants. We disagree. As Perrine notes, the specific and articulable facts standard derives from the Supreme Court's decision in Terry. Thus, we are familiar with the standard imposed. Perrine argues the government's affidavit in support of its application for an order failed to provide specific and articulable facts because it did not attach a copy of the chat between stevedragonslayer and Vanlandingham; it did not contain anything specifically indicating that Vanlandingham was a truthful and reliable person; and it failed to show that stevedragonslayer was logged on to Yahoo! on the date of the crime, September 2, 2005, at 2 p.m. The affidavit attached to the October 14, 2005, application for a disclosure order for Yahoo! stated as follows: Officer Humbert received information from Leetsdale Police Officer Wayne Drish indicating that a resident of his jurisdiction had received what appeared to be child pornography via his computer while in a Yahoo! Inc messaging chat room. Officer Humbert interviewed the resident, James Vanlandingham, and learned that he was logged into Yahoo Messaging Chat on September 2, 2005 at approximately 2:00 PM EDT. He received a message from an individual logged in Yahoo Messaging Chat as stevedragonslayer. This individual invited James Vanlandingham to view his web cam. When James Vanlandingham viewed the cam he was presented with images of a young female he describes as between 6 and 9 years of age performing oral sex on an adult male, images of a young female he describes as between 6 and 9 years of age having oral sex performed on her by an adult female and images of two young females he describes as between 6 and 9 years of age walking around in a bathroom unclothed. James Vanlandingham immediately reported the incident to law enforcement. I did view that chat log of this session between James Vanlandingham and stevedragonslayer. Appellant's App. at 72, attach. D. The affidavit attached to the December 8, 2005, application for a disclosure order for Cox recited the same information as above, and added at the bottom: On 11/22/05 I received a response from Yahoo! Inc. which provided the IP login address of 68.103.177.146 for the screenname stevedragonslayer on 10/09/05, 10/22/05, 10/29/05, 10/30/05, 11/01/05, and 11/06/05. Appellant's App. at 83: attach. E. The statutory standard requires that the governmental entity offers specific and articulable facts showing that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the . . . records or other information sought, are relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation. 18 U.S.C. § 2703(d). The affidavits above satisfy that standard. There is no reason to doubt Vanlandingham's account of what happened; indeed, he immediately contacted the police, which suggests he was simply a concerned citizen. Further, the officer stated that he had personally read the chat log between Vanlandingham and stevedragonslayer. The details provided are specific and certainly would lead to a reasonable suspicion that stevedragonslayer was involved in child pornography. Perrine also alleges that the application for the order was deficient because it failed to show that stevedragonslayer was on line with Vanlandingham on September 2, 2005, at 2 PM. The district court dismissed this as of no moment because Yahoo!'s logs simply did not go back that far. As indicated above, Yahoo! employee Annie Cheung testified that Yahoo! tracks dates, times, and IP addresses for login attempts on a Yahoo! account and maintains that information for approximately thirty days. Both Cheung's testimony and the actual document turned over by Yahoo! to law enforcement pursuant to the court's order revealed that stevedragonslayer had IP addresses of both 68.103.177.226 and 68.103.177.146. Appellant's App. at 129-30. Yahoo!'s records also revealed that stevedragonslayer with IP address 68.103.177.146 had logged on to Yahoo! a number of times in October and November 2005. We agree with the district court that the absence of a specific record of stevedragonslayer with IP address 68.103.177.226 or 68.103.177.146 being logged on at 2 PM on September 2, 2005, does not undermine the adequacy of the affidavit. The reason for that absence is simply that Yahoo! fails to maintain records for more than thirty days. Perrine admitted he was stevedragonslayer and gives no explanation for who else could have been logged on to Yahoo! on September 2, 2005, with the name stevedragonslayer, when every other login for stevedragonslayer matches the IP address of Perrine's computer. [7] In sum, we conclude that the affidavits submitted in the application for an order under the ECPA and the Pennsylvania statute contained specific and articulable facts showing that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the . . . information sought[ ][ ][is] relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation. 18 U.S.C. § 2703(d); 18 Pa.C.S.A. § 5743(d). Perrine also appears to make a broader Fourth Amendment challenge to the government's acquisition of his subscriber information from Yahoo! and Cox. The district court held: the identifying information at issue here  defendant's name, address, etc.  was information that he voluntarily transmitted to the third-party internet providers, Cox and Yahoo!. Indeed, defendant also admitted at the hearing that he had enabled peer-to-peer file sharing on his computer, thereby giving anyone with internet access the ability to gain entrance to his computer. Under such a scenario, a defendant holds no reasonable expectation of privacy that the Fourth Amendment will protect. Mem. and Order at 16, Appellant's App. at 149. We agree with the district court. Every federal court to address this issue has held that subscriber information provided to an internet provider is not protected by the Fourth Amendment's privacy expectation. See, e.g., Guest v. Leis, 255 F.3d 325, 336 (6th Cir.2001) (holding, in a non-criminal context, that computer users do not have a legitimate expectation of privacy in their subscriber information because they have conveyed it to another person-the system operator); United States v. Hambrick, 225 F.3d 656 (4th Cir.2000) (unpublished), affirming United States v. Hambrick, 55 F.Supp.2d 504, 508-09 (W.D.Va.1999) (holding that there was no legitimate expectation of privacy in noncontent customer information provided to an internet service provider by one of its customers); United States v. D'Andrea, 497 F.Supp.2d 117, 120 (D.Mass.2007) (The Smith line of cases has led federal courts to uniformly conclude that internet users have no reasonable expectation of privacy in their subscriber information, the length of their stored files, and other noncontent data to which service providers must have access.); Freedman v. America Online, Inc., 412 F.Supp.2d 174, 181 (D.Conn.2005) (In the cases in which the issue has been considered, courts have universally found that, for purposes of the Fourth Amendment, a subscriber does not maintain a reasonable expectation of privacy with respect to his subscriber information.); United States v. Sherr, 400 F.Supp.2d 843, 848 (D.Md.2005) (The courts that have already addressed this issue . . . uniformly have found that individuals have no Fourth Amendment privacy interest in subscriber information given to an ISP.); United States v. Cox, 190 F.Supp.2d 330, 332 (N.D.N.Y.2002) (same); United States v. Kennedy, 81 F.Supp.2d 1103, 1110 (D.Kan.2000) (Defendant's constitutional rights were not violated when [internet provider] divulged his subscriber information to the government. Defendant has not demonstrated an objectively reasonable legitimate expectation of privacy in his subscriber information.). Cf. United States v. Forrester, 512 F.3d 500, 510 (9th Cir.2008) (e-mail and Internet users have no expectation of privacy in the to/from addresses of their messages or the IP addresses of the websites they visit because they should know that this information is provided to and used by Internet service providers for the specific purpose of directing the routing of information.); United States v. Lifshitz, 369 F.3d 173, 190 (2d Cir.2004) (Individuals generally possess a reasonable expectation of privacy in their home computers. . . . They may not, however, enjoy such an expectation of privacy in transmissions over the Internet or e-mail that have already arrived at the recipient.). Furthermore, as Perrine conceded, he had peer-to-peer software on his computer, which permitted anyone else on the internet to access at least certain folders in his computer. To the extent such access could expose his subscriber information to outsiders, that additionally vitiates any expectation of privacy he might have in his computer and its contents. Thus, Perrine has no Fourth Amendment privacy expectation in the subscriber information he gave to Yahoo! and Cox.