Opinion ID: 773807
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Search of Subscriber Information

Text: 31 Plaintiffs argue that defendants violated the Fourth Amendment by accessing bulletin board subscriber information. These records include information such as subscribers' names, addresses, birthdates, and passwords. As we have noted above, a person must have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the matter searched in order to challenge a search under the Fourth Amendment. Individuals generally lose a reasonable expectation of privacy in their information once they reveal it to third parties. See United States v. Miller, 425 U.S. 435, 443 (1976), limited by statute. A bank customer, for instance, does not have a legitimate expectation of privacy in the information that he or she has conveyed to the bank; by placing the information under control of a third party, the customer assumes the risk that the bank will convey the information to the government. Id. Courts have applied this principle to computer searches and seizures to conclude 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. See Maxwell, 45 M.J. at 418; United States v. Kennedy, 81 F. Supp. 2d 1103, 1110 (D. Kan. 2000) (rejecting a privacy interest in subscriber information communicated to an internet service provider); United States v. Hambrick, No. 99-4793, 2000 WL 1062039, at  (4th Cir. Aug. 3, 2000) (unpublished) (holding that defendant destroyed any privacy interest in his subscriber information when he conveyed it to an internet service provider) (citing Miller, 425 U.S. at 442). We conclude that plaintiffs in these cases lack a Fourth Amendment privacy interest in their subscriber information because they communicated it to the systems operators. In addition, in the O'Brien case, subscriber information would be that of the users, who do not have Fourth Amendment standing.