Opinion ID: 614604
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: 3 Legislative History of the ECPA

Text: Because we find that the plain language of the ECPA is clear, we accept the district court's finding that it did not need to consider the legislative history of the ECPA. Stated otherwise, [l]egislative history cannot trump the statute. Bonneville Power Admin. v. FERC, 422 F.3d 908, 920 (9th Cir.2005). Still, the Court will analyze the statute's history for its instructive value. Suzlon argues that the ECPA was enacted against a backdrop of Fourth Amendment protections, citing the following passage: With the advent of computerized record keeping systems Americans have the ability to lock away a great deal of personal and business information . . . [T]he law must advance with technology to ensure the continued vitality of the fourth amendment. . . . Congress must act to protect the privacy of our citizens. . . The Committee believes that [this Act] represents a fair balance between the privacy expectations of American citizens and the legitimate needs of law enforcement agencies. S.Rep. No. 99-541, at 3557-59 (1986), 1986 U.S.C.C.A.N. 3555, 3559. This passage indicates that Congress' primary intent in passing the ECPA was to protect the privacy interests of American citizens. Suzlon therefore argues that the intent of the ECPA was to protect only American citizens. But the fact that the ECPA was intended to shore up Fourth Amendment rights does not mean that Congress specifically intended to exclude foreign citizens from the scope of the Amendment. To the contrary, to fully protect American citizens it might be necessary to extend the ECPA to all domestic communications, regardless of who sent them. Further, Suzlon's restrictive reading of the ECPA would put email service providers in an untenable position. By limiting the ECPA only to those people entitled to Fourth Amendment protection, as urged by Suzlon, an email service provider would need to assess whether a particular account holder was at all times a U.S. citizen, or later became a citizen, or was a resident alien with some Fourth Amendment protection, or if there were other reasons to provide Fourth Amendment rights. This would be a costly, fact-intensive, and difficult determination. But under Microsoft's interpretation of any person, it's clear that the ECPA at least applies whenever the requested documents are stored in the United States. The Court does not address here whether the ECPA applies to documents stored or acts occurring outside of the United States. See Zheng v. Yahoo! Inc., 2009 WL 4430297 at , No. C-08-1068 MMC (Dec. 2, 2009) (finding that the ECPA does not cover acts outside of the United States). Suzlon also argues that nowhere in the legislative history or text of the ECPA does Congress address civil litigation, indicating that perhaps Congress intended for the ECPA to only apply to government law enforcement. This argument ignores Ninth Circuit cases holding exactly the opposite. Theofel, 359 F.3d at 1071-72, 1077 (applying the ECPA to subpoena requests). As before, even if Congress' most pressing concern was law enforcement agencies issuing subpoenas, that does not mean that Congress was not also concerned about civil litigants issuing discovery requests. Declaring an implicit exception to the ECPA for civil litigation would erode the safety of the stored electronic information and trigger Congress' privacy concerns. See id. at 1073-74 (finding that because the subpoena caused disclosure of documents that otherwise would have remained private[,] it invaded the specific interests that the [ECPA] seeks to protect. (citations and quotation marks omitted)). We conclude that nothing in the legislative history clearly refutes the plain language of the text. In fact, the underlying policy implications of the statute are most consistent with the plain text of the ECPA. Thus, the Court remains firm in its initial finding that the ECPA unambiguously applies to foreign citizens.