Opinion ID: 181032
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Search & Seizure of Warshak's Emails

Text: Warshak argues that the government's warrantless, ex parte seizure of approximately 27,000 of his private emails constituted a violation of the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures. [12] The government counters that, even if government agents violated the Fourth Amendment in obtaining the emails, they relied in good faith on the Stored Communications Act (SCA), 18 U.S.C. §§ 2701 et seq., a statute that allows the government to obtain certain electronic communications without procuring a warrant. The government also argues that any hypothetical Fourth Amendment violation was harmless. We find that the government did violate Warshak's Fourth Amendment rights by compelling his Internet Service Provider (ISP) to turn over the contents of his emails. However, we agree that agents relied on the SCA in good faith, and therefore hold that reversal is unwarranted. [13]
The Stored Communications Act (SCA), 18 U.S.C. §§ 2701 et seq., permits a `governmental entity' to compel a service provider to disclose the contents of [electronic] communications in certain circumstances. Warshak II, 532 F.3d at 523. As this court explained in Warshak II: Three relevant definitions bear on the meaning of the compelled-disclosure provisions of the Act. [E]lectronic communication service[s] permit users... to send or receive wire or electronic communications, [18 U.S.C.] § 2510(15), a definition that covers basic e-mail services, see Patricia L. Bellia et al., Cyberlaw: Problems of Policy and Jurisprudence in the Information Age 584 (2d ed. 2004). [E]lectronic storage is any temporary, intermediate storage of a wire or electronic communication ... and ... any storage of such communication by an electronic communication service for purposes of backup protection of such communication. 18 U.S.C. § 2510(17). [R]emote computing service[s] provide computer storage or processing services to customers, id. § 2711(2), and are designed for longer-term storage, see Orin S. Kerr, A User's Guide to the Stored Communications Act, and a Legislator's Guide to Amending It, 72 Geo. Wash. L.Rev. 1208, 1216 (2004). The compelled-disclosure provisions give different levels of privacy protection based on whether the e-mail is held with an electronic communication service or a remote computing service and based on how long the e-mail has been in electronic storage. The government may obtain the contents of e-mails that are in electronic storage with an electronic communication service for 180 days or less only pursuant to a warrant. 18 U.S.C. § 2703(a). The government has three options for obtaining communications stored with a remote computing service and communications that have been in electronic storage with an electronic service provider for more than 180 days: (1) obtain a warrant; (2) use an administrative subpoena; or (3) obtain a court order under § 2703(d). Id. § 2703(a), (b). 532 F.3d at 523-24 (some alterations in original).
Email was a critical form of communication among Berkeley personnel. As a consequence, Warshak had a number of email accounts with various ISPs, including an account with NuVox Communications. In October 2004, the government formally requested that NuVox prospectively preserve the contents of any emails to or from Warshak's email account. The request was made pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 2703(f) and it instructed NuVox to preserve all future messages. [14] NuVox acceded to the government's request and began preserving copies of Warshak's incoming and outgoing emailscopies that would not have existed absent the prospective preservation request. Per the government's instructions, Warshak was not informed that his messages were being archived. In January 2005, the government obtained a subpoena under § 2703(b) and compelled NuVox to turn over the emails that it had begun preserving the previous year. In May 2005, the government served NuVox with an ex parte court order under § 2703(d) that required NuVox to surrender any additional email messages in Warshak's account. In all, the government compelled NuVox to reveal the contents of approximately 27,000 emails. Warshak did not receive notice of either the subpoena or the order until May 2006.
The Fourth Amendment provides that [t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause.... U.S. CONST. amend. IV. The fundamental purpose of the Fourth Amendment is to safeguard the privacy and security of individuals against arbitrary invasions by government officials. Camara v. Mun. Ct., 387 U.S. 523, 528, 87 S.Ct. 1727, 18 L.Ed.2d 930 (1967); see Skinner v. Ry. Labor Execs.' Ass'n, 489 U.S. 602, 613-14, 109 S.Ct. 1402, 103 L.Ed.2d 639 (1989) (The [Fourth] Amendment guarantees the privacy, dignity, and security of persons against certain arbitrary and invasive acts by officers of the Government or those acting at their direction.). Not all government actions are invasive enough to implicate the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment's protections hinge on the occurrence of a `search,' a legal term of art whose history is riddled with complexity. Widgren v. Maple Grove Twp., 429 F.3d 575, 578 (6th Cir.2005). A search occurs when the government infringes upon an expectation of privacy that society is prepared to consider reasonable. United States v. Jacobsen, 466 U.S. 109, 113, 104 S.Ct. 1652, 80 L.Ed.2d 85 (1984). This standard breaks down into two discrete inquiries: first, has the [target of the investigation] manifested a subjective expectation of privacy in the object of the challenged search? Second, is society willing to recognize that expectation as reasonable? California v. Ciraolo, 476 U.S. 207, 211, 106 S.Ct. 1809, 90 L.Ed.2d 210 (1986) (citing Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 740, 99 S.Ct. 2577, 61 L.Ed.2d 220 (1979)). Turning first to the subjective component of the test, we find that Warshak plainly manifested an expectation that his emails would be shielded from outside scrutiny. As he notes in his brief, his entire business and personal life was contained within the ... emails seized. Appellant's Br. at 39-40. Given the often sensitive and sometimes damning substance of his emails, [15] we think it highly unlikely that Warshak expected them to be made public, for people seldom unfurl their dirty laundry in plain view. See, e.g., United States v. Maxwell, 45 M.J. 406, 417 (C.A.A.F.1996) ([T]he tenor and content of e-mail conversations between appellant and his correspondent, `Launchboy,' reveal a[n] ... expectation that the conversations were private.). Therefore, we conclude that Warshak had a subjective expectation of privacy in the contents of his emails. The next question is whether society is prepared to recognize that expectation as reasonable. See Smith, 442 U.S. at 740, 99 S.Ct. 2577. This question is one of grave import and enduring consequence, given the prominent role that email has assumed in modern communication. Cf. Katz, 389 U.S. at 352, 88 S.Ct. 507 (suggesting that the Constitution must be read to account for the vital role that the public telephone has come to play in private communication). Since the advent of email, the telephone call and the letter have waned in importance, and an explosion of Internet-based communication has taken place. People are now able to send sensitive and intimate information, instantaneously, to friends, family, and colleagues half a world away. Lovers exchange sweet nothings, and businessmen swap ambitious plans, all with the click of a mouse button. Commerce has also taken hold in email. Online purchases are often documented in email accounts, and email is frequently used to remind patients and clients of imminent appointments. In short, account is an apt word for the conglomeration of stored messages that comprises an email account, as it provides an account of its owner's life. By obtaining access to someone's email, government agents gain the ability to peer deeply into his activities. Much hinges, therefore, on whether the government is permitted to request that a commercial ISP turn over the contents of a subscriber's emails without triggering the machinery of the Fourth Amendment. In confronting this question, we take note of two bedrock principles. First, the very fact that information is being passed through a communications network is a paramount Fourth Amendment consideration. See ibid.; United States v. U.S. Dist. Court, 407 U.S. 297, 313, 92 S.Ct. 2125, 32 L.Ed.2d 752 (1972) ([T]he broad and unsuspected governmental incursions into conversational privacy which electronic surveillance entails necessitate the application of Fourth Amendment safeguards.). Second, the Fourth Amendment must keep pace with the inexorable march of technological progress, or its guarantees will wither and perish. See Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27, 34, 121 S.Ct. 2038, 150 L.Ed.2d 94 (2001) (noting that evolving technology must not be permitted to erode the privacy guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment); see also Orin S. Kerr, Applying the Fourth Amendment to the Internet: A General Approach, 62 Stan. L.Rev. 1005, 1007 (2010) (arguing that the differences between the facts of physical space and the facts of the Internet require courts to identify new Fourth Amendment distinctions to maintain the function of Fourth Amendment rules in an online environment). With those principles in mind, we begin our analysis by considering the manner in which the Fourth Amendment protects traditional forms of communication. In Katz, the Supreme Court was asked to determine how the Fourth Amendment applied in the context of the telephone. There, government agents had affixed an electronic listening device to the exterior of a public phone booth, and had used the device to intercept and record several phone conversations. See 389 U.S. at 348, 88 S.Ct. 507. The Supreme Court held that this constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment, see id. at 353, 88 S.Ct. 507, notwithstanding the fact that the telephone company had the capacity to monitor and record the calls, see Smith, 442 U.S. at 746-47, 99 S.Ct. 2577 (Stewart, J., dissenting). In the eyes of the Court, the caller was surely entitled to assume that the words he utter[ed] into the mouthpiece w[ould] not be broadcast to the world. Katz, 389 U.S. at 352, 88 S.Ct. 507. The Court's holding in Katz has since come to stand for the broad proposition that, in many contexts, the government infringes a reasonable expectation of privacy when it surreptitiously intercepts a telephone call through electronic means. Smith, 442 U.S. at 746, 99 S.Ct. 2577 (Stewart, J., dissenting) ([S]ince Katz, it has been abundantly clear that telephone conversations are fully protected by the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.). Letters receive similar protection. See Jacobsen, 466 U.S. at 114, 104 S.Ct. 1652 (Letters and other sealed packages are in the general class of effects in which the public at large has a legitimate expectation of privacy[.]); Ex Parte Jackson, 96 U.S. 727, 733, 24 L.Ed. 877 (1877). While a letter is in the mail, the police may not intercept it and examine its contents unless they first obtain a warrant based on probable cause. Ibid. This is true despite the fact that sealed letters are handed over to perhaps dozens of mail carriers, any one of whom could tear open the thin paper envelopes that separate the private words from the world outside. Put another way, trusting a letter to an intermediary does not necessarily defeat a reasonable expectation that the letter will remain private. See Katz, 389 U.S. at 351, 88 S.Ct. 507 ([W]hat [a person] seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected.). Given the fundamental similarities between email and traditional forms of communication, it would defy common sense to afford emails lesser Fourth Amendment protection. See Patricia L. Bellia & Susan Freiwald, Fourth Amendment Protection for Stored E-Mail, 2008 U. Chi. Legal F. 121, 135 (2008) (recognizing the need to eliminate the strangely disparate treatment of mailed and telephonic communications on the one hand and electronic communications on the other); City of Ontario v. Quon, ___ U.S. ___, 130 S.Ct. 2619, 2631, 177 L.Ed.2d 216 (2010) (implying that a search of [an individual's] personal e-mail account would be just as intrusive as a wiretap on his home phone line); United States v. Forrester, 512 F.3d 500, 511 (9th Cir.2008) (holding that [t]he privacy interests in [mail and email] are identical). Email is the technological scion of tangible mail, and it plays an indispensable part in the Information Age. Over the last decade, email has become so pervasive that some persons may consider [it] to be [an] essential means or necessary instrument[] for self-expression, even self-identification. Quon, 130 S.Ct. at 2630. It follows that email requires strong protection under the Fourth Amendment; otherwise, the Fourth Amendment would prove an ineffective guardian of private communication, an essential purpose it has long been recognized to serve. See U.S. Dist. Court, 407 U.S. at 313, 92 S.Ct. 2125; United States v. Waller, 581 F.2d 585, 587 (6th Cir.1978) (noting the Fourth Amendment's role in protecting private communications). As some forms of communication begin to diminish, the Fourth Amendment must recognize and protect nascent ones that arise. See Warshak I, 490 F.3d at 473 (It goes without saying that like the telephone earlier in our history, e-mail is an ever-increasing mode of private communication, and protecting shared communications through this medium is as important to Fourth Amendment principles today as protecting telephone conversations has been in the past.). If we accept that an email is analogous to a letter or a phone call, it is manifest that agents of the government cannot compel a commercial ISP to turn over the contents of an email without triggering the Fourth Amendment. An ISP is the intermediary that makes email communication possible. Emails must pass through an ISP's servers to reach their intended recipient. Thus, the ISP is the functional equivalent of a post office or a telephone company. As we have discussed above, the police may not storm the post office and intercept a letter, and they are likewise forbidden from using the phone system to make a clandestine recording of a telephone callunless they get a warrant, that is. See Jacobsen, 466 U.S. at 114, 104 S.Ct. 1652; Katz, 389 U.S. at 353, 88 S.Ct. 507. It only stands to reason that, if government agents compel an ISP to surrender the contents of a subscriber's emails, those agents have thereby conducted a Fourth Amendment search, which necessitates compliance with the warrant requirement absent some exception. In Warshak I, the government argued that this conclusion was improper, pointing to the fact that NuVox contractually reserved the right to access Warshak's emails for certain purposes. While we acknowledge that a subscriber agreement might, in some cases, be sweeping enough to defeat a reasonable expectation of privacy in the contents of an email account, see Warshak I, 490 F.3d at 473; Warshak II, 532 F.3d at 526-27, we doubt that will be the case in most situations, and it is certainly not the case here. As an initial matter, it must be observed that the mere ability of a third-party intermediary to access the contents of a communication cannot be sufficient to extinguish a reasonable expectation of privacy. In Katz, the Supreme Court found it reasonable to expect privacy during a telephone call despite the ability of an operator to listen in. See Smith, 442 U.S. at 746-47, 99 S.Ct. 2577 (Stewart, J., dissenting). Similarly, the ability of a rogue mail handler to rip open a letter does not make it unreasonable to assume that sealed mail will remain private on its journey across the country. Therefore, the threat or possibility of access is not decisive when it comes to the reasonableness of an expectation of privacy. Nor is the right of access. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation points out in its amicus brief, at the time Katz was decided, telephone companies had a right to monitor calls in certain situations. Specifically, telephone companies could listen in when reasonably necessary to protect themselves and their properties against the improper and illegal use of their facilities. Bubis v. United States, 384 F.2d 643, 648 (9th Cir.1967). In this case, the NuVox subscriber agreement tracks that language, indicating that NuVox may access and use individual Subscriber information in the operation of the Service and as necessary to protect the Service. Acceptable Use Policy, available at http://business.windstream.com/Legal/acceptable Use.htm (last visited Aug. 12, 2010). Thus, under Katz, the degree of access granted to NuVox does not diminish the reasonableness of Warshak's trust in the privacy of his emails. [16] Our conclusion finds additional support in the application of Fourth Amendment doctrine to rented space. Hotel guests, for example, have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their rooms. See United States v. Allen, 106 F.3d 695, 699 (6th Cir.1997). This is so even though maids routinely enter hotel rooms to replace the towels and tidy the furniture. Similarly, tenants have a legitimate expectation of privacy in their apartments. See United States v. Washington, 573 F.3d 279, 284 (6th Cir.2009). That expectation persists, regardless of the incursions of handymen to fix leaky faucets. Consequently, we are convinced that some degree of routine access is hardly dispositive with respect to the privacy question. Again, however, we are unwilling to hold that a subscriber agreement will never be broad enough to snuff out a reasonable expectation of privacy. As the panel noted in Warshak I, if the ISP expresses an intention to audit, inspect, and monitor its subscriber's emails, that might be enough to render an expectation of privacy unreasonable. See 490 F.3d at 472-73 (quoting United States v. Simons, 206 F.3d 392, 398 (4th Cir.2000)). But where, as here, there is no such statement, the ISP's control over the [emails] and ability to access them under certain limited circumstances will not be enough to overcome an expectation of privacy. Id. at 473. We recognize that our conclusion may be attacked in light of the Supreme Court's decision in United States v. Miller, 425 U.S. 435, 96 S.Ct. 1619, 48 L.Ed.2d 71 (1976). In Miller, the Supreme Court held that a bank depositor does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the contents of bank records, checks, and deposit slips. Id. at 442, 96 S.Ct. 1619. The Court's holding in Miller was based on the fact that bank documents, including financial statements and deposit slips, contain only information voluntarily conveyed to the banks and exposed to their employees in the ordinary course of business. Ibid. The Court noted, The depositor takes the risk, in revealing his affairs to another, that the information will be conveyed by that person to the Government.... [T]he Fourth Amendment does not prohibit the obtaining of information revealed to a third party and conveyed by him to Government authorities, even if the information is revealed on the assumption that it will be used only for a limited purpose and the confidence placed in the third party will not be betrayed. Id. at 443, 96 S.Ct. 1619 (citations omitted). But Miller is distinguishable. First, Miller involved simple business records, as opposed to the potentially unlimited variety of confidential communications at issue here. See ibid. Second, the bank depositor in Miller conveyed information to the bank so that the bank could put the information to use in the ordinary course of business. Ibid. By contrast, Warshak received his emails through NuVox. NuVox was an intermediary, not the intended recipient of the emails. See Bellia & Freiwald, Stored E-Mail, 2008 U. Chi. Legal F. at 165 ([W]e view the best analogy for this scenario as the cases in which a third party carries, transports, or stores property for another. In these cases, as in the stored e-mail case, the customer grants access to the ISP because it is essential to the customer's interests.). Thus, Miller is not controlling. Accordingly, we hold that a subscriber enjoys a reasonable expectation of privacy in the contents of emails that are stored with, or sent or received through, a commercial ISP. Warshak I, 490 F.3d at 473; see Forrester, 512 F.3d at 511 (suggesting that [t]he contents [of email messages] may deserve Fourth Amendment protection). The government may not compel a commercial ISP to turn over the contents of a subscriber's emails without first obtaining a warrant based on probable cause. Therefore, because they did not obtain a warrant, the government agents violated the Fourth Amendment when they obtained the contents of Warshak's emails. Moreover, to the extent that the SCA purports to permit the government to obtain such emails warrantlessly, the SCA is unconstitutional.
Even though the government's search of Warshak's emails violated the Fourth Amendment, the emails are not subject to the exclusionary remedy if the officers relied in good faith on the SCA to obtain them. See Krull, 480 U.S. at 349-50, 107 S.Ct. 1160. In Krull, the Supreme Court noted that the exclusionary rule's purpose of deterring law enforcement officers from engaging in unconstitutional conduct would not be furthered by holding officers accountable for mistakes of the legislature. Ibid. Thus, even if a statute is later found to be unconstitutional, an officer cannot be expected to question the judgment of the legislature. Ibid. However, an officer cannot be said to have acted in good-faith reliance upon a statute if its provisions are such that a reasonable officer should have known that the statute was unconstitutional. Id. at 355, 107 S.Ct. 1160. Naturally, Warshak argues that the provisions of the SCA at issue in this case were plainly unconstitutional. He argues that any reasonable law enforcement officer would have understood that a warrant based on probable cause would be required to compel the production of private emails. In making this argument, he leans heavily on Warshak I, which opined that the SCA permits agents to engage in searches that clearly do not comport with the Fourth Amendment. 490 F.3d at 477. However, we disagree that the SCA is so conspicuously unconstitutional as to preclude good-faith reliance. As we noted in Warshak II, [t]he Stored Communications Act has been in existence since 1986 and to our knowledge has not been the subject of any successful Fourth Amendment challenges, in any context, whether to § 2703(d) or to any other provision. 532 F.3d at 531. Furthermore, given the complicated thicket of issues that we were required to navigate when passing on the constitutionality of the SCA, it was not plain or obvious that the SCA was unconstitutional, and it was therefore reasonable for the government to rely upon the SCA in seeking to obtain the contents of Warshak's emails. [17] But the good-faith reliance inquiry does not end with the facial validity of the statute at issue. In Krull, the Supreme Court hinted that the good-faith exception does not apply if the government acted outside the scope of the statute on which it purported to rely. 480 U.S. at 360 n. 17, 107 S.Ct. 1160. It should be noted that this portion of the Krull Court's opinion was merely dicta, and it appears that we have yet to pass on the question. However, it seems evident that an officer's failure to adhere to the boundaries of a given statute should preclude him from relying upon it in the face of a constitutional challenge. [18] Once the officer steps outside the scope of an unconstitutional statute, the mistake is no longer the legislature's, but the officer's. See ibid. (In that context, the relevant actors are not legislators or magistrates, but police officers who concededly are engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime. (citation and internal quotation marks omitted)). Therefore, use of the exclusionary rule is once again efficacious in deterring officers from engaging in conduct that violates the Constitution. Ibid. Warshak argues that the government violated several provisions of the SCA and should therefore be precluded from arguing good-faith reliance. First, Warshak argues that the government violated the SCA's notice provisions. Under § 2703(b)(1)(B), the government must provide notice to an account holder if it seeks to compel the disclosure of his emails through either a § 2703(b) subpoena or a § 2703(d) order. However, § 2705 permits the government to delay notification in certain situations. The initial period of delay is 90 days, but the government may seek to extend that period in 90-day increments. In this case, the government issued both a § 2703(b) subpoena and a § 2703(d) order to NuVox, seeking disclosure of Warshak's emails. At the time, the government made the requisite showing that notice should be delayed. However, the government did not seek to renew the period of delay. In all, the government failed to inform Warshak of either the subpoena or the order for over a year. Conceding that it violated the notice provisions, the government argues that such violations are irrelevant to the issue of whether it reasonably relied on the SCA in obtaining the contents of Warshak's emails. We agree. As the government notes, the violations occurred after the emails had been obtained. Thus, the mistakes at issue had no bearing on the constitutional violations. Because the exclusionary rule was designed to deter constitutional violations, we decline to invoke it in this situation. But Warshak does not hang his hat exclusively on the government's violations of the SCA's notice provisions. He also argues that the government exceeded its authority under another SCA provision § 2703(f)by requesting NuVox to engage in prospective preservation of his future emails. [19] Under § 2703(f), [a] provider of wire or electronic communication services or a remote computing service, upon the request of a governmental entity, shall take all necessary steps to preserve records and other evidence in its possession pending the issuance of a court order or other process. 18 U.S.C. § 2703(f) (emphasis added). Warshak argues that this statute permits only retrospective preservationin other words, preservation of emails already in existence. He notes that the Department of Justice (DOJ) generally agrees with his construction of the statute, pointing to the DOJ's own computer-surveillance manual, which states: [Section] 2703(f) letters should not be used prospectively to order providers to preserve records not yet created. If agents want providers to record information about future electronic communications, they should comply with the [Wiretap Act and the Pen/Trap statute]. [20] Ultimately, however, this statutory violation, whether it occurred or not, [21] is irrelevant to the issue of good-faith reliance. The question here is whether the government relied in good faith on § 2703(b) and § 2703(d) to obtain copies of Warshak's emails. True, the government might not have been able to gain access to the emails without the prospective preservation request, as it was NuVox's practice to delete all emails once they were downloaded to the account holder's computer. Thus, in a sense, the government's use of § 2703(f) was a but-for cause of the constitutional violation. But the actual violation at issue was obtaining the emails, and the government did not rely on § 2703(f) specifically to do that. Instead, the government relied on § 2703(b) and § 2703(d). The proper inquiry, therefore, is whether the government violated either of those provisions, and the preservation request is of no consequence to that inquiry. Warshak's next argument is that the government violated § 2703(d) by failing to provide any particularized factual basis when seeking an order for disclosure. Under § 2703(d), such an order shall issue only if the governmental entity offers specific and articulable facts showing that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the contents of a wire or electronic communication ... are relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation. To the extent that he is arguing that the government's application was insufficient, Warshak is wrong. The government's application indicated that it was investigating a complex, large-scale mail and wire fraud operation based in Cincinnati, Ohio. The application also indicated that interviews of current and former employees of the target company suggest that electronic mail is a vital communication tool that has been used to perpetuate the fraudulent conduct. Additionally, the application observed that various sources [have verified] that NuVox provides electronic communications services to certain individual(s) [under] investigation. In light of these statements, it is clear that the application was, in fact, supported by specific and articulable facts, especially given the diminished standard that applies to § 2703(d) applications. See United States v. Perrine, 518 F.3d 1196, 1202 (10th Cir.2008) (noting that the `specific and articulable facts' standard derives from the Supreme Court's decision in Terry ); Warshak I, 490 F.3d at 463 (The parties agree that the standard of proof for a court order'specific and articulable facts showing that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the contents ... or records ... are relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation'falls short of probable cause.). Finally, Warshak argues that a finding of good-faith reliance is improper because the government presented the magistrate with an erroneous definition of the term electronic storage. As noted above, if an email is in electronic storage for less than 180 days, the government may not compel its disclosure without a warrant. 18 U.S.C. § 2703(a). In applying for the subpoena and the order that eventually resulted in the disclosure of Warshak's NuVox emails, the government suggested to the magistrate that an email is not in electronic storage if it has already been accessed, viewed, or downloaded. Warshak argues that this definition of electronic storage does not comport with the Ninth Circuit's decision in Theofel v. Farey-Jones, 359 F.3d 1066, 1071 (9th Cir.2004), which held that prior access is irrelevant to whether the [emails] at issue were in electronic storage. Warshak further argues that, because the government failed to mention the Ninth Circuit's definition, it usurped the court's function to determine whether an email ... [is] in `electronic storage[.]' Appellant's Br. at 38. As an initial matter, it is manifest that the decisions of the Ninth Circuit are not binding on courts in this circuit. It therefore cannot be said that the government somehow violated § 2703 by failing to cite an out-of-circuit decision that it thought to be wrongly decided. Incidentally, the government is not alone in thinking that the Ninth Circuit's definition of electronic storage is incorrect. One commentator has noted that Theofel is quite implausible and hard to square with the statutory test. Kerr, A User's Guide to the Stored Communications Act, 72 Geo. Wash. L.Rev. at 1217; see also United States v. Weaver, 636 F.Supp.2d 769, 773 (C.D.Ill. 2009) (Previously opened emails stored by Microsoft for Hotmail users are not in electronic storage, and the Government can obtain copies of such emails using a trial subpoena.). Furthermore, it does a disservice to the magistrate judge to suggest that the government usurped the role of the court. The government's application did include a proposed definition of the term electronic storage. That does not mean, however, that the magistrate judge unhesitatingly received that definition, and, as the government notes, the magistrate presumably [had] the opportunity to consider and review relevant precedent. Appellee's Br. at 117. Consequently, we find that, although the government violated the Fourth Amendment, the exclusionary rule does not apply, as the government relied in good faith on § 2703(b) and § 2703(d) to access the contents of Warshak's emails. [22]