Opinion ID: 2334199
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Breach of Privacy Conviction

Text: Brooks also challenges the sufficiency of the evidence to support his conviction for breach of privacy as criminalized in K.S.A. 21-4002. He argues the evidence does not show that he intercepted the e-mail communications sent between his wife and her coworker. In analyzing this issue, we apply the same bifurcated standard of review we described earlier. Taking the facts in a light most favorable to the State, we, therefore, presume Brooks did not have authorization to access J.P.'s e-mail account or to read, forward, or copy any of her electronic correspondence, including those with her paramour. The jury so found in convicting Brooks, and ample evidence supports that determination. The evidence also shows that Brooks accessed the account and obtained the e-mails on May 7, 2006, some 7 to 9 months after they were sent. The hard copies of the e-mail introduced at trial indicate J.P. composed and sent the e-mails to her coworker. The hard copies show no responses from him and, thus, no extended communication threads between the two. Although the breach of privacy statute antedates any common use of e-mail, the parties do not dispute the medium constitutes private communication within the meaning of K.S.A. 21-4002. Their tacit assumption of common ground on the point seems well taken. We recognize the e-mail J.P. sent to be protected communication. The controlling issue then comes down to whether accessing an e-mail from the sender's account (presumably the sent box or an archived file) months after it was composed and directed to the addressee amounts to intercepting that communication as prohibited in K.S.A. 21-4002(a). This court, therefore, must interpret the statutory language and decide a matter of law. Arnett, 290 Kan. at 47, 223 P.3d 780. When doing so, the appellate courts are to glean the legislative purpose and intent from the language used, and they are to give effect to that purpose and intent. State v. Gracey, 288 Kan. 252, 257, 200 P.3d 1275 (2009); Hall v. Dillon Companies, Inc., 286 Kan. 777, 785, 189 P.3d 508 (2008). It is not the courts' business or function to add to or take away from the language of a statute. And the courts should not impose some meaning on a statute beyond what the words themselves convey through their common and usual definitions. Gracey, 288 Kan. at 257, 200 P.3d 1275. Where there is some play or flexibility in the meaning of the phrasing in a criminal statute, the rule of lenity requires making the interpretative call in favor of the defendant. Trautloff, 289 Kan. at 796-97, 217 P.3d 15. (Any reasonable doubt as to the meaning of the statute is decided in favor of the accused.). The parties have directed us to no Kansas appellate decision construing the term intercept or intercepting as used in K.S.A. 21-4002 or elsewhere in the Kansas Criminal Code. We have not found such a case either. In Black's Law Dictionary 883 (9th ed. 2009), intercept is defined as: To covertly receive or listen to (a communication). The term, in that context, usually refers to covert reception by a law-enforcement agency in the manner of a wiretap. Black's Law Dictionary 883. Common usage ascribes several meanings to intercept. It may mean to stop, seize, or interrupt in progress or course or before arrival. Merriam-Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary 651 (11th ed. 2003). More likely applicable here, it means to receive (a communication or signal directed elsewhere) usu[ally] secretly. Merriam-Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary 651. Brooks presses the meaning entailing stopping or seizing something before its arrival. But that definition really makes little sense as the exclusive one for the crime of breach of privacy. The statute criminalizes, among other acts, intercepting ... a message by telephone[.] To stop a telephone call before its arrivalthat is, before the party called answersresults in no communication at all. There would be no message to intercept. Accordingly, that definition standing alone cannot be the proper one. What makes more sense is a meaning reflecting covert access to the communication while in transit from the sender to the recipient without necessarily delaying or impeding the transmission. A telephone wiretap would be an example of a prohibited interception. The communication is not disrupted or delayed, but a third party listens without authorization of the participants. The third party may also record the communication, although that is not an element of the offense. The statutory exemption for telephone calls overheard through regularly installed equipment on a party line lends support to that reading of the statute. Without the exemption, that sort of activity presumably would be covered under the general definition of the offense in K.S.A. 21-4002. Were the statute applicable only to conduct stopping communication, the legislature would not have believed the exemption necessary. (Even if party lines have now gone the way of coin-operated pay phones, the legislature's inclusion of that language when the measure was drafted some 40 years ago sheds light on the statutory meaning. The inclusion of telegraph communication in the statute seems similarly antiquated in today's computerized society.) The statute also prohibits intercepting letters. We suppose that could occur if a third party filched the letter after the writer left it with other outgoing mail in an office setting or once a postal worker deposited it in the recipient's box. The offender then could clandestinely open the envelope, read (and possibly copy) the contents, return the letter, and reseal the envelope to complete delivery to the recipient. The offender also could simply keep or destroy the letter. That probably would violate K.S.A. 21-4002, as well, by taking intercepting to mean stopping or seizing the communication. There is no reason a statutory word or phrase cannot incorporate two related, if different, common meanings. Taking and keeping the letter would also amount to theft under K.S.A. 21-3701 by [o]btaining or exerting unauthorized control over property. Perhaps of even more consequence to the perpetrator, the conduct would violate federal criminal laws regarding interference with mail. See 18 U.S.C. §§ 1702, 1703, 1708 (2006). While we hesitate to draw too much of an analogy between e-mail and traditional mail, e-mail could be subject to interception during transmission from sender to recipient. We understand that to be technologically possible but somewhat unlikely. See United States v. Szymuszkiewicz, 622 F.3d 701, 704-05 (7th Cir.2010) (discussing methods of transmitting e-mails); Email Privacy, www. nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/email-privacy-29610.html (accessed June 22, 2011); ABA Formal Op. 99-413 (March 10, 1999) (The ethics committee finds no ethical violation in lawyers using unencrypted e-mail to communicate with consenting clients, in part, because of the difficulty of intercepting an entire message in transit.). An e-mail theoretically could be intercepted in transmission in violation of K.S.A. 21-4002. More commonly, the privacy of e-mail communication may be compromised because the message is unintentionally misdirected, its electronic storage compromised, or a hard copy slips away. See Reach, Enjoy Email Responsibly, 44 Ark. Law 30, 30-31 (Summer 2009); DuBoff & King, E-Mail Traps And Troubles, 69 Or. St. B. Bull. 36, 36-37 (July 2009). What Brooks accomplished here does not violate K.S.A. 21-4002. He accessed electronic copies of e-mails the writer retained after sending the communication months earlier. It is difficult to see how that amounts to intercepting those e-mails. They were not in the process of being delivered at all. Again, to borrow a traditional letter analogy, his action was of a kind with taking an unauthorized look at a file copy of a letter sent out 6 months earlier. To consider that intercepting strains any definition. Brooks notes a broad definition of intercept in K.S.A. 22-2514(3) but says it does not apply. The State, wisely we think, advances no contrary assertion. By its terms, K.S.A. 22-2514 confines the definitions there to use in the Kansas Code of Criminal Procedure in Chapter 22. The legislature, then, meant the definition should not be transplanted to the criminal code in Chapter 21. The courts would overstep their role in interpreting statutes to ignore the sort of explicit limitation in K.S.A. 22-2514. In the Code of Criminal Procedure, that definition shapes when law enforcement agencies must obtain advance court approval to secretly intercept private communications. The broad definition, then, serves to insulate citizens against undue government intrusion. Had the legislature intended to blend that public policy with the punishment of private misconduct the general purpose behind the criminal codeit would have expressly incorporated the definition in K.S.A. 22-2514 into the criminal code or specific statutes within that chapter. The federal government has criminalized the interception of electronic communication in 18 U.S.C. § 2511(4) (2006) and has provided an additional private civil remedy in 18 U.S.C. § 2520 (2006). Those statutes use the same definition of intercept as contained in K.S.A. 22-2514(3). 18 U.S.C. § 2510(4) (2006). The federal courts generally have treated stored e-mails or other computer files as being outside the scope of both the criminal proscription and the civil cause of action. See Szymuszkiewicz, 622 F.3d at 705-06; Fraser v. Nationwide Mut. Ins. Co., 352 F.3d 107, 113 (3d Cir.2003) (Every circuit court to have considered the matter has held that an `intercept' under the [federal statutes] must occur contemporaneously with transmission.) (cases cited). To the limited extent those cases have some relevance, they support the interpretation we give the term intercepting in the breach of privacy statute, K.S.A. 21-4002. On the whole, however, we think they might be of substantially more persuasive value in construing K.S.A. 22-2514 and the requirements for judicially authorized interception of various forms of communication, where the Kansas Legislature has chosen to employ the same definitions as the federal statutes. Since K.S.A. 22-2514 expressly limits the application of the definitions set out there, federal caselaw construing comparable definitions should be similarly limited as a source for construing Kansas statutory law. For the most part, what we have said to this point is an academic comment on the State's effort to prop up a peculiar charging decision. In short, we fail to see how the facts of this case taken in the best light for the State fit within the breach of privacy statute. But it's not as if Brooks' conduct in obtaining unauthorized copies of J.P.'s e-mails from her account would otherwise go unpunished. The legislature has enacted a specific criminal statute covering exactly what the jury necessarily found Brooks did in obtaining the e-mails. And that statute carries harsher penalties than does breach of privacy. (Had the jury bought Brooks' version that J.P. gave him the password and other information to access her e-mail, it would have come back with a not guilty verdict.) Under K.S.A. 21-3755(b)(1)(A), the offense of computer crime includes intentionally and without authorization accessing and ... copying ... or taking possession of a computer, computer system, computer network or any other property. (Emphasis added.) The offense also includes intentionally exceeding the limits of authorization and ... copying ... or taking possession of a computer, computer system, computer network or any other property. (Emphasis added.) K.S.A. 21-3755(b)(1)(C). The term property is defined to be, among other things, information and electronically produced or stored data[.] K.S.A. 21-3755(a)(8). The statute, then, punishes unauthorized copying of information or electronic data. See State v. Rupnick, 280 Kan. 720, 738, 125 P.3d 541 (2005) (The court holds the term copying, as used in K.S.A. 21-3755, adequately conveys notice of the prohibited conduct and finds the violation depends not on how much of an original was ... duplicated, but whether it was duplicated at all.). That easily covers the conduct the State imputed to Brooks in charging him and what the jury concluded he did in finding him guilty of breach of privacy. It also does so without requiring the verbal contortions necessary to make the description of breach of privacy embrace the wrongful conduct. Computer crime is a severity level 8 nonperson felony, K.S.A. 21-3755(b)(2), rather than a misdemeanor. The computer crime statute has been on the books in its current form since 1997 and, thus, was available to the State in prosecuting Brooks in 2006. We find that the evidence, even taken in a light most favorable to the State, fails to support the crime of breach of privacy. When Brooks accessed J.P.'s e-mail account and copied communications she had sent more than 6 months earlier, he did not intercept them within the meaning of K.S.A. 21-4002. He could not, as a matter of law, be guilty of that offense. Accordingly, we are constrained to reverse Brooks' conviction on the charge of breach of privacy and to enter a judgment of acquittal.