Opinion ID: 4465383
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Querying

Text: There is a third issue in this case, however: the storage of Section 702 information in databases and the subsequent querying of those databases by the government. The district court did not make any findings regarding whether the NSA, the FBI or any other agency queried databases with regard to Hasbajrami prior to the FISC order. Instead, it appeared to accept the government's argument, framed within the context of a discussion of whether the minimization procedures provided adequate protections so as to make collection reasonable, that the government could freely query information it had lawfully acquired 68 without further Fourth Amendment inquiry. See Suppression Dedsion, 2016 WL 1029500 at  n.20 (I agree with the government that it would be perverse to authorize the unrestricted review of lawfully collected information but then restrict the targeted review of the same information in response to tailored inquires.) (internal alterations and quotation marks omitted). The government renewed this argument on appeal. FoUowing oral argument, during which the government would neither confirm nor deny whether it had queried any databases of Section 702-acquired information, this Court ordered further briefing. The government Cov't Supplemental Classified Br. at 6-7 (emphasis added). 69 Like inadvertent collection, the storage and querying of information raises challenging constitutional questions, to which there are few dear answers in the case law. Cf. In re Directives, 551 F.3d at 1015 (dismissing petitioner's concerns, under the PAA, because the government assures us that it does not maintain a database of incidentally collected information from non-targeted United States persons, and there is no evidence to the contrary.). The issue was not addressed by the Ninth Circuit inMohamud, which explicitly left open the question of whether the incidental overhear doctrine permits the unconstitutional and widespread retention and querying of the incidentally collected information, stating that the issue was not before [the court]. 843 F.3d at 440 n.24. The district court in Mohamud did reach the question, however, and it concluded that the subsequent querying of a§ 702 collection, even if U.S. person identifiers are used, is not a separate search and does not make § 702 surveillance unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment. United States v. Mohamud, No. 3:10-cr-475-KI-1, 2014 WL 2866749, at  (D. Or. June 24, 2014), affd, 843 F.3d 420 (9th Cir. 2016). We do not find that logic persuasive. Storage has little significance in its own right: the lawfully-collected communications, even of United States persons, continue to serve the same foreign intelligence purpose in the continued 70 surveillance of a foreign operative, whether his interlocutor is a United States person or a citizen and resident of some other country. The material is justifiably retained, not to keep tabs on a United States person, but to keep tabs on the non­ United States person abroad who has been targeted.20 But querying that stored data does have important Fourth Amendment implications, and those implications counsel in favor of considering querying a separate Fourth Amendment event that, in itself, must be reasonable. Our reasoning is based on three considerations. First, courts have increasingly recognized the need for additional probable cause or reasonableness assessments to support a search of information or objects that the government has lawfully collected. It is true that the FBI does not need an additional warrant to go down to its evidence locker and look through a box of evidence it collected from a crime scene. But lawful collection alone is not always enough to justify a future search. In Riley v. California, the Supreme Court held that a warrant was necessary to search a cell phone, even when that cell phone was lawfully seized pursuant to 20The considerations might be different if the storage involved data responsive to a warrant and retained for the purpose of a domestic criminal prosecution. This Court, sitting en bane, considered similar issues in United States v. Ganias, 824 F.3d 199 (2d Cir. 2016), although we ultimately did not need to decide them. 71 a search incident to a lawful arrest. 573 U.S. 373, 401 (2014). Several circuit court decisions have reached similar conclusions. In United States v. Sedaghaty, for instance, the government had searched a defendant's home pursuant to a warrant focused on tax violations. 728 F.3d 885,912 (9th Cir. 2013). Agents seized nine computers, which forensic experts searched with an evolving list of search terms in order to comb through the computers for useful materials, eventually finding evidence confirming the defendant was supporting Chechen terrorist groups. Id. The Ninth Circuit concluded that the searches beyond the scope of the warrant were improper, noting that the government should not be able to comb through [the defendant's] computers plucking out new forms of evidence that the investigating agents have decided may be useful after it failed to find evidence of willfulness regarding the tax returns. Id. at 913. To do so required a new warrant, even though the government already had access to the machines and had lawfully seized them. See also United States v. Runyan, 275 F.3d 449, 464-65 (5th Cir. 2001) (finding that police exceeded the scope of a private search when they examined disks that the private searchers did not examine and would have required a warrant to do so); United States v. Mulder, 808 F.2d 1346, 1349 (2d Cir. 1987) (holding that a separate warrant was needed to test 72 packages in suitcase for drugs, even though the suitcase was lawfully sei.1.ed via private search). Second, Section 702 is sweeping in its technological capacity and broad in its scope. In the case of the incidental collection discussed above, - was collecting and reviewing e�mails for its own foreign intelligence purposes in , and reporting �vidence that it obtained suggesting on-going criminal activity in the United States. Such activity is closely analogous to precedents drawn from traditional domestic criminal wiretapping. As discussed above, it is not difficult to conclude that, like incidentally overheard criminal conversations and evidence of crimes seized in plain view, the collection and use of information obtained in this way is reasonable within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. But the vast technological capabilities of the Section 702 program, estimated by the PCLOB as totaling nearly 250 million e-mails annually by 2011 and likely larger numbers since then, may mean that analysts are not reviewing each of those e-mails contemporaneously with their collection. PCLOB Report at 116, 128-29. If such a vast body of information is simply stored in a database, available for review by request from domestic law enforcement agencies solely 73 on the speculative possibility that evidence of interest to agents investigating a particular individual might be found there, the program begins to look more like a dragnet, and a query more like a general warrant, and less like an individual officer going to the evidence locker to check a previously-acquired piece of evidence against some newfound insight The Supreme Court has expressed increasing concern about the interaction between Fourth Amendment precedent and evolving government technological capabilities. Riley rested in part on the fact that [c]ell phones ... place vast quantities of personal information literally in the hands of individuals. 573 U.S. at 386. A search of the information on a cell phone [ therefore] bears little resemblance to the type of physical search considered in past cases. Id.; see also Ganias, 824 F.3d at 217-18 (noting privacy implications of expansive technology and data storage). And in Carpenter, the Court concluded that a warrant (or a valid substitute) was required to acquire cell-site records, even though they were stored by a third party and under traditi onal Fourth Amendment doctrine a cellphone user would not have an expectation of privacy in such information: We decline to grant the state unrestricted access to a wireless carrier's database of physical location information. In light of the deeply revealing nahlre of [this information], its depth, breadth, and 74 comprehensive reach, and the inescapable and automatic nature of its collection, the fact that such information is gathered by a third party does not make it any less deserving of Fourth Amendment protection. The Government's acquisition of the cell-site records here was a search under that Amendment. Carpenter v. United States, 138 S. Ct. 2206, 2223 (2018). Third, as a practical matter, querying is problematic because it may make it easier to target wide-ranging information about a given United States person at a point when the government knows it is investigating such a person. Section 702 forbids the government from targeting a non-United States person as a backdoor way of targeting a United States person. 50 U.S.C. § 1881a(b). But, as detailed above, in the course of its intelligence gathering operations, the NSA may have collected all sorts of information about an individual, the sum of which may resemble what the NSA would have gathered if it had directly targeted that individual in the first place. To permit that information to be accessed indiscriminately, for domestic law enforcement purposes, without any reason to believe that the individual is involved in any criminal activity and or even that any information about the person is likely to be in the database, just to see if there is anything incriminating in any conversations that might happen to be there, would be at odds with the bedrock Fourth Amendment concept that law 75 enforcement agents may not invade the privacy of individuals without some objective reason to believe that evidence of crime will be found by a search. Treating querying as a Fourth Amendment event and requiring the query itself to be reasonable provides a backstop to protect the privacy interests of United States persons and ensure that they are not being improperly targeted. Fourth, much may dep end on who is querying what database. There is a potentially significant difference between, for example, the FBI querying its own database and the FBI requesting that the NSA query its far larger archive of collected communications, collected pursuant to a broader mandate. As we understand the public sources of information about the collection and use of Section 702 material, the FBI maintains its own records of communications provided to it by the NSA. See PCLOB Report at 58-59. Such communications presumably were provided because review of the material properly collected by the NSA under Section 702 uncovered evidence of criminal activity (relating to terrorism or otherwise), and were appropriately communicated to domestic law enforcement. Just as the FBI may act on such information where it requires immediate criminal investigation, it may well be appropriate for the agency to retain the information and store it for later review when other legitimate 76 evidence or leads make that information relevant to an on-going investigation. Such a review of the agency's own files is arguably analogous to traditional law enforcement techniques; evidence lawfully collected does not always accumulate to a sufficient quantity to warrant an immediate arrest or indictment, but may be retained and later reviewed when additional evidence is developed. FBI queries directed to a larger archive of millions of communications collected and stored by the NSA for foreign intelligence purposes, on the chance that something in those files might contain incriminating information about a person of interest to domestic law enforcement, raise different concerns. What kinds of querying, subject to what limitations, under what procedures, are reasonable within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, and when (if ever) such querying of one or more databases, maintained by an agency of the United States for information about a United States person, might require a warrant, are difficult and sensitive questions. We do not purport to answer them here, or even to canvass all of the considerations that may prove relevant or the various type s of querying that may raise distinct problems. Indeed, we cannot do so on the sparse record presented. We do not know what databases were queried by whom, for what reasons, what (if any) 77 information was uncovered by such queries, or what (if any) use was made of any information uncovered. The government has represented that no information derived from any such queries was presented to the FISC to obtain the FISA warrant, but has not addressed whether any such information contributed to the investigation in other ways. Given these considerations, the district court here must conduct an inquiry into whether any querying of databases of Section 702-acquired information using terms related to Hasbajrami was lawful under the Fourth Amendment. Fo r today we need only reiterate that the ultimate touchstone of the Fourth Amendment is reasonableness. Riley, 573 U.S. at 381; cf Abu 4Jihaad, 630 F.3d at 121-22 (stating that, even in the application of the warrant requirement, the requirement is flexible, so that different standards may be compatible with the Fourth Amendment in light of the different purposes and practical considerations at issue.) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). We cannot, and should not, go further, pending development of a more complete record by the district court on remand, and an assessment by the 78 district court as to whether whatever was done was consistent with the Fourth Amendment and whether, if there was any illegality, any evidence should have been suppressed in response to Hasbajrami' s motion.21 IV. Hasbajrami's Conditional Plea and Resolution of the Motion to Suppress As addressed above, there is still an open issue as to what queries of Section 702-acquired information occurred in this case, whether any such queries were reasonable and, if unreasonable, whether the queried information tainted the application before the FISC or in some other way would lead to the suppression of any evidence. But in its post•argument briefing, the government argues that even if it did query Section 702 databases, that action ultimately could not matter because the 11On November 14, 2019, Hasbajrami filed a Rule 280) letter alerting this Court to three recently declassified opinions from the FISC and FISCR. See In re DNI/AG 702(h) Certifications 2018, 941 F.3d 547 (FISA Ct. Rev. 2019); Redacted (FISA Ct. Sep. 4 , 2019); Redacted, 2018 WL 9909971 (PISA Ct. O ct. 18, 2018). Based on our review, we do not believe that these opinions substantively affect our decision because, even to the extent that their approach differs from ours, they are not binding on this Court. Since we are remanding for the district court to further assess this issue with the benefit of a more complete record, we decline to engage further at this time. We did not find it necessary to review the unredacted versions of these opinions in reaching this conclusion and, therefore, Hasbajrami's request for access to the unredacted versions of these opinions is DENIED. 79 communications collected as a result of incidental collection would provide an independent source sufficient to support the FISC's probable cause determination. Gov't Supplemental Classified Br. at 9 (arguing that this Court's analysis should be limited to alleged 'searches' where a causal link can be drawn between the search and the acquisition of the evidence that Hasbajrami seeks to suppress.). The government relies primarily on Murray v. United States, 487 U.S. 533 (1988). In Murray, federal law enforcement agents surveilling the defendant witnessed him drive into a warehouse in South Boston. Id. at 535. Agents arrested the defendant and a co-conspirator after they drove away from the warehouse and, upon arrest, the agents discovered marijuana in the defendant's truck. The agents then forced entry into the warehouse, where they observed in plain view numerous burlap-wrapped bales that were later found to contain marijuana. They left without disturbing the bales, kept the warehouse under surveillance, and re-entered only after obtaining a warrant. Id. In applying for the warrant, however, the agents did not advise the court of their prior entry; they also did not rely on their observations of the contents of the warehouse in order to establish probable cause. Id. at 536. The Supreme Court held that 80 suppression of the evidence eventually seized from the warehouse would not be required if the warrant-authorized search of the warehouse was an independent source of the challenged evidence.'' Id. at 543-44. Although [k)nowledge that the marijuana was in the warehouse was assuredly acquired at the time of the unlawful entry ... it was also acquired at the time of entry pursuant to the warrant, and if that later acquisition was not the result of the earlier entry there is no reason why the independent source doctrine should not apply. 1' Id. at 541. Even assuming the government was querying databases simultaneously with its incidental collection activities, according to the government's position its agents would be analogous to the agents in Murray. Their subjective understanding of the evidence might have been affected by the fruits of an unreasonable search, and had they relied on that evidence in support of a warrant application they might not be able to use the evidence obtained by executing that warrant. But, according to the government, if the information they placed before the FISC, and that court's subsequent probable cause determination, rested on other information, that later acquisition was not the result of the earlier [search]1' and so there is no reason why the independent source doctrine should not apply. Id. at 541. 81 We cannot apply the independent source doctrine on the record currently before us. Had this case gone to trial, our task would be significantly different. Under those circumstances, we could have undertaken to trace, as the Ninth Circuit did in Mohamud, 843 F .3d at 438 & n.21, individual pieces of evidence that had actually been presented to the jury at that trial in order to assess whether those pieces of evidence had been obtained consistent with the Fourth Amendment. And if individual pieces of evidence needed to be suppressed, the Court could then decide whether the admission of any given piece of evidence was harmless when compared to all the legally obtained evidence that was ultimately presented at trial. But we are not reviewing the acquisition of evidence used at a trial. Rather, Hasbajrami's appeal reaches us following a conditional plea made pursuant to Rule ll(a}(2) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. Rule l l(a)(2) provides that: With the consent of the court and the government, a defendant may enter a conditional plea of guilty or nolo contendere, reserving in writing the right to have an appellate court review an adverse determination of a specified pretrial motion. A defendant who prevails on appeal may then withdraw the plea. 82 According to the Advisory Committee Notes to the 1983 Amendments, conditional pleas should be permitted 11only when the decision of the court of appeals will dispose of the case either by allowing the plea to stand or by such action as compelling dismissal of the indictment or suppressing essential evidence. See also United States v. Bundy, 392 F.3d 641, 647-48 {4th Cir. 2004). The classic example of a case in which that standard is met is a narcotics case in which the evidence sought to be suppressed is the very basis of the charge. The suppression of the evidence would end the case; if the evidence is admissible, guilt is assured; if not, no evidence of guilt remains. The situation is more problematic and complicated, however, where the suppression of some but not all of the evidence in the case is a possible outcome. Our sister circuits have applied a harmless error calculation when evaluating whether an opportunity to withdra,w a plea is a necessary remedy after it is determined on appeal that the challenged district court ruling was, in whole or in part, erroneous. See, e.g., United States v. Lustig, 830 F.3d 1075, 1086 (9th Cir. 2016); United States v. Rivera-Nevarez, 418 F.3d 1104 (10th Cir. 2005) (affirming conviction on harmless error where conviction was upheld on 83 grounds not considered by district court). 22 Those courts have applied the harmless error rule by asking whether the erroneous suppression ruling could have affected [the defendant's] decision to plead guilty.'' Lustig, 830 F.3d at 1086. But the record here is murky. It is clear that the presence or absence of Section 702 surveillance affected Hasbajrami' s initial decision to plead guilty. Indeed, it was because the district court was convinced that Hasbajrami's initial decision to plead guilty was predicated in part on his lawyers' assurance that the government had represented that there was no warrantless surveillance in his case that it granted the defense motion to withdraw Hasbajrami's first guilty plea when those representations were revealed to have been inaccurate. App'x at 39 (noting that Hasbajrami specifically asked [his counsel] about whether warrantless wiretaps had played a role in his case. After they informed him that such wiretaps were not part of the evidence, he was more willing to plead guilty.). Moreover, Hasbajrami moved to suppress all Section 702 material 22The Advisory Committee also considered Fed. R. Crim. P. ll(h)'s harmless error calculus to apply, but it noted that, without full factual development, invocation of the harmless error rule would be difficult. The Committee noted, however, that relatively few appellate decisions result in affirmance upon [harmless error]. Thus it will only rarely be true that the conditional plea device will cause an appellate court to consider constitutional questions which could otherwise have been avoided by invocation of the doctrine of harmless error. Fed. R. Crim. P. 11, advisory committee's notes to 1983 amendments. 84 collected by the government, including matter that was not presented to the FISC to obtain the traditional FISA warrant. What is unclear is just how much Section 702-acquired information would remain, after further fact-finding at the district court. It may be that, after a full evaluation of the record in light of Hasbajrami's motion to suppress, the evidence available to the government remains very much intact. For all we know, any queries conducted by the government may have been entirely reasonable, they may not have yielded any evidence at all, and any material that was uncovered even by a putatively unconstitutional query may not have affected the investigation in any way. However those matters would be decided on remand, though, we cannot predict here whether any such queries were constitutionally questionable, or whether any information derived from such queries should itself have been suppressed, or directly or indirectly tainted the warrant application. And, without being able to fully predict or decide either of those issues, we also cannot adequately predict whether a potentially-altered evidentiary landscape could have affected [Hasbajrami's] decision to plead guilty. Lustig, 830 F.3d at 1086; see also United States v. uake, 95 F.3d 409, 420-421 (6th Cir. 1996) (noting that Fed. R. Crim. P. ll(a)(2) addresses the situation in which the defendant is fully 85 successful on appeal, and not the effect of a partially successful appeal/ but vacating judgment because [ defendant was] successful in excluding what appears to be the most damning evidence against him.) (emphasis in original). Taking these considerations into account, then, we are left with a posture similar to that faced by this Court in United States v. Wong Ching Hing, 867 F.2d 754 (2d Cir. 1989). The defendant in that case had reserved his right to appeal the district court's failure to suppress roadside statements made to police without Miranda warnings, as well as subsequent statements made at a police station. Id. at 756. This Court, like the district court, found that the roadside statements were voluntary and that supp ression was therefore unnecessary as to those. Id. But the defendant had made two separate sets of statements to law enforcement once detained at the police station. The first set was made to the state police, and it did not add anything to what he had voluntarily provided at the initial stop. The second set of statements, however, was made to a DEA agent and formed the basis of the information to which Wong pled guilty, which charged him with making a false statement. Id. The Court concluded that the circumstances may well warrant the conclusion that the detention was not valid as a Terry stop. Id. at 758. But it was 86 unclear what effect such a holding would have on Wong's legal position, because the record was not clear as to whether the conditional guilty plea was conditioned upon the government's being successful in admitting all of the statements or any one of them. Id. at 758 (emphasis added). The Court therefore vacated the judgment and remanded to the district court for further proceedings, noting that the government had also urged affirmance on an alternative ground and that the parties will not be precluded from asserting new arguments on remand. ld. We therefore follow a similar course of action here. Because the district court was not even aware whether such querying had occurred, and because even we have not been advised as to what was done, for what reasons, and with what results, we remand to the district court to determine the facts, consistent with the considerations stated above, and to decide in the first instance, based on its fachlal findings, whether there was a constitutional violation in this particular case, and what (if any) evidence would need to be suppressed if there was indeed a violation. Similarly, we leave it to the district court to determine, in the first instance., whether any exceptions to the exclusionary rule, such as a good 87 faith exception, might apply in this case. 23 Finally, we leave it to the district court to determine, if any evidence should have been suppressed, whether the failure to suppress that evidence was harmless, and if it was not what remedy is appropriate. On remand, the district court should undertake whatever proceedings are necessary, consistent with the considerations stated above. To the extent that any decisions must be made about what information is to be presented to appropriately-cleared defense counsel, such decisions too are best left to the district court after it becomes clear what the inquiry about querying will involve. 24 Cf Abu-Jihaad, 630 F.3d at 129 (noting that, under FISA, disclosure is 23 The government has argued before this Court that the good faith exception would apply. Because of the incomplete record here, we take no position as to whether the exception applies. 24 Hasbajrami argues on appeal that his due proces s rights would be violated if he is not provided with an unredacted or unmodified version of the district court's order. He concedes, however, that the argument would be rendered moot if this Court reverses on either constitutional or statutory grounds. After reviewing the minor redactions, we conclude that the limited information redacted from the district court's opinion could not have substantially affected Hasbajrami' s due process rights in this appeal. In any event, we undertook de novo review and we are satisfied that the limited redactions in the portions of this opinion relating to the district court's rulings do not require disclosure to the defense at this time . We therefore deny Hasbajrami's request to unseal or to disclose to the defense team the redacted portions of the district court opinion. As addressed above, however, the district court remains free to consider, in the 88 exception and ex parte, in camera review is the rule, and that the review of materials that are relatively straightforward and not complex may not necessarily require adversarial testing).