Opinion ID: 6335456
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Were the ESPs an “instrument or agent” of the

Text: government? The Fourth Amendment guarantees the right to be free from “unreasonable searches and seizures.” U.S. Const. amend. IV. The Fourth Amendment regulates only governmental action; it does not protect against intrusive conduct by private individuals acting in a private capacity. United States v. Jacobsen, 466 U.S. 109, 113 (1984). The Constitution does, however, “constrain[] governmental action by whatever instruments or in whatever modes that action may be taken.” Lebron v. Nat’l R.R. Passenger Corp., 513 U.S. 374, 392 (1995) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Thus, a private search or seizure may implicate the Fourth Amendment where the private party acts “as an agent of the Government or with the participation or knowledge of any governmental official.” Jacobsen, UNITED STATES V. ROSENOW 15 466 U.S. at 113 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). “A defendant challenging a search conducted by a private party bears the burden of showing the search was governmental action.” United States v. Young, 153 F.3d 1079, 1080 (9th Cir. 1998) (per curiam). “Whether a private party should be deemed an agent or instrument of the Government for Fourth Amendment purposes necessarily turns on the degree of the Government’s participation in the private party’s activities, a question that can only be resolved in light of all the circumstances.” Skinner v. Ry. Lab. Execs.’ Ass’n, 489 U.S. 602, 614–15 (1989) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). Rosenow argues that the evidence discovered by Yahoo and Facebook was obtained illegally and should be suppressed because they were acting as government agents when they searched his online accounts. His argument is two-fold: (1) two federal statutes—the Stored Communications Act and the Protect Our Children Act— transformed the ESPs’ searches into governmental action, and (2) the government was sufficiently involved in the ESPs’ searches that they constituted governmental conduct. Each argument fails.
searches into governmental action? A federal regulatory scheme that authorizes and encourages private searches may transform a private search into governmental conduct. Id. at 614–16. Skinner considered a facial challenge to the Federal Railroad Administration’s regulations governing employee drug testing by private railroads. Id. The regulations mandated drug testing following a “major train accident,” but also 16 UNITED STATES V. ROSENOW permitted railroads to drug-test employees in other specified circumstances. Id. at 609–11. The Supreme Court held that the regulations—even those that did not mandate drug testing—implicated the Fourth Amendment because they amounted to governmental “encouragement, endorsement, and participation” in an otherwise private search. Id. at 615– 16. The Court emphasized that the regulations authorized private railroad companies to perform drug tests, preempted conflicting state laws and collective-bargaining terms, prohibited the railroad companies from contracting away their right to require the tests, required the companies to report certain evidence derived from the tests, and prohibited private employees from refusing to comply with the tests. Id. at 615–16. Thus, by removing “all legal barriers to the testing” and making “plain not only its strong preference for testing, but also its desire to share the fruits of such intrusions,” the Court held that the Federal Railroad Administration had transformed private searches by private companies into governmental action. Id. at 615–16. Rosenow argues that, like the regulations in Skinner, federal regulation of ESP searches and disclosures trigger Fourth Amendment scrutiny because, taken together, the Stored Communications Act authorizes ESPs to conduct warrantless searches, see 18 U.S.C. § 2701(c), and the Protect Our Children Act requires private parties to report evidence derived from those searches to a government agent or entity, see id. § 2258A. 3 As explained below, Rosenow’s argument is unconvincing. 3 The district court did not address Rosenow’s claim that the NCMEC is a governmental agent or entity for Fourth Amendment purposes. There is good reason to think that the NCMEC is, on the face of its authorizing statutes, a governmental entity under Fourth UNITED STATES V. ROSENOW 17 The Stored Communications Act criminalizes unauthorized searches of stored electronic communications content, 18 U.S.C. § 2701(a)–(b), but expressly excepts ESPs from liability. Id. § 2701(c)(1). This exception makes sense; otherwise, ESPs would be unable to ensure that user content does not violate the ESPs’ own terms of use. But unlike the regulations at issue in Skinner, which explicitly authorized railroads to administer drug and alcohol tests to their employees based on “reasonable suspicion,” Skinner, 489 U.S. at 611, the Stored Communications Act does not authorize ESPs to do anything more than access information already contained on their servers as dictated by their terms of service. See 18 U.S.C. § 2701(c); Orin Kerr, A User’s Guide to the Stored Communications Act, and a Legislator’s Guide to Amending It, 72 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 1208, 1212 (2004) (“[E]ven if the Fourth Amendment protects files stored with an [E]SP, the [E]SP can search through all of the stored files on its server and disclose them to the government without violating the Fourth Amendment.”). Additionally, the Protect Our Children Act disclaims any governmental mandate to search: § 2258A(f) provides that this statute “shall [not] be construed to require” an ESP to “monitor” users or their content or “affirmatively search, screen, or scan for” evidence of criminal activity. 18 U.S.C. § 2258A(f). Mandated reporting is different than mandated searching. Our caselaw is clear that a private actor does not become a government agent simply by complying with a Amendment doctrine. See United States v. Ackerman, 831 F.3d 1292, 1296 (10th Cir. 2016) (“NCMEC’s law enforcement powers extend well beyond those enjoyed by private citizens—and in this way it seems to mark it as a fair candidate for a governmental entity.”). For purposes of this case, we assume, without deciding, that the NCMEC is a governmental actor. 18 UNITED STATES V. ROSENOW mandatory reporting statute. See Mueller v. Auker, 700 F.3d 1180, 1191–92 (9th Cir. 2012) (“[Hospital] did not become a state actor simply because it complied with state law requiring its personnel to report possible child neglect to Child Protective Services.”); cf. Ferguson v. City of Charleston, 532 U.S. 67, 81 (2001) (holding that disclosure by medical professionals of “information that under rules of law or ethics is subject to reporting requirements” does not ordinarily violate the Fourth Amendment). Under both the Stored Communications Act and the Protect Our Children Act, Yahoo and Facebook are free to choose not to search their users’ data. Therefore, when they do search, they do so of their own volition. Moreover, unlike the regulations in Skinner, which prohibited railroad companies from contracting away their right to require drug tests, 489 U.S. at 615–16, neither statute at issue here prevents an ESP from contracting away its right to search users’ communications. See United States v. Stevenson, 727 F.3d 826, 830 (8th Cir. 2013). Thus, the statutes do not have the “clear indices of the Government’s encouragement, endorsement, and participation” sufficient to implicate the Fourth Amendment. Skinner, 489 U.S. at 615–16. As a final note, persuasive authority also militates against Rosenow’s argument: three of our sister circuits have explicitly rejected the analogy of 18 U.S.C. § 2258A to the railroad regulations at issue in Skinner. See United States v. Miller, 982 F.3d 412, 424 (6th Cir. 2020), cert. denied, 141 S. Ct. 2797 (2021); United States v. Ringland, 966 F.3d 731, 736 (8th Cir. 2020), cert. denied, 141 S. Ct. 2797 (2021); Stevenson, 727 F.3d at 830; United States v. Richardson, 607 F.3d 357, 364–67 (4th Cir. 2010); cf. United States v. Meals, 21 F.4th 903, 907 (5th Cir. 2021) UNITED STATES V. ROSENOW 19 (rejecting defendant’s argument that § 2258A transformed Facebook into a government agent); United States v. Cameron, 699 F.3d 621, 636–38 (1st Cir. 2012) (holding that Yahoo’s statutory duty under federal law to report to NCMEC “did not impose any obligation to search for child pornography,” but “merely an obligation to report child pornography of which Yahoo[] became aware.”). Those courts compared the railroad regulations only to § 2258A of the Protect Our Children Act, and Rosenow points both to this statute and to the Stored Communications Act. 4 But as explained, the Stored Communications Act does not mandate, encourage, or endorse private searches, and the reasoning of our sister circuits reinforces our conclusion that an ESP’s search of its users’ communications does not result inevitably from governmental encouragement as opposed to “private initiative.” Skinner, 489 U.S. at 615. We hold that federal law did not transform Yahoo’s and Facebook’s private searches into governmental action. b. Was there sufficient government involvement in the ESPs’ searches to implicate the Fourth Amendment? Even if federal law does not render searches performed by private actors to be government conduct, a private search still may implicate the Fourth Amendment if there is a “sufficiently close nexus” between the government and the private entity’s challenged conduct. See Jackson v. Metro. 4 Rosenow argues for the first time in reply that § 230 of the Communications Decency Act also encourages ESPs to locate and disclose criminal activity to the government. We decline to consider this new argument. See CTIA-The Wireless Ass’n v. City of Berkeley, 928 F.3d 832, 850 (9th Cir. 2019). 20 UNITED STATES V. ROSENOW Edison Co., 419 U.S. 345, 351 (1974). In assessing whether a sufficient nexus exists, “the relevant inquiry is: (1) whether the government knew of and acquiesced in the intrusive conduct; and (2) whether the party performing the search intended to assist law enforcement efforts or further his own ends.” See United States v. Cleaveland, 38 F.3d 1092, 1094 (9th Cir. 1994) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).
To satisfy the first requirement, the government must be involved in the search “either directly as a participant or indirectly as an encourager of the private citizen’s actions.” United States v. Walther, 652 F.2d 788, 791 (9th Cir. 1981). The government’s knowledge of a private search, by itself, does not turn that search into one protected by the Fourth Amendment—were that not the case, the Fourth Amendment’s protections would cover a significant amount of private conduct of which the government was simply aware. Likewise, “[m]ere governmental authorization of a particular type of private search in the absence of more active participation or encouragement” does not trigger Fourth Amendment protection. Id. at 792; see also Flagg Bros., Inc. v. Brooks, 436 U.S. 149, 164 (1978) (“[M]ere acquiescence in a private action” does not transform a private actor into a government agent); Cameron, 699 F.3d at 637 (“We will not find that a private party has acted as an agent of the government simply because the government has a stake in the outcome of a search.” (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)). Nor do “de minimis or incidental contacts” between the government and a private entity. Walther, 652 F.2d at 791. Here, the FBI knew about Yahoo’s ongoing internal investigations into the use of its platform for sexual UNITED STATES V. ROSENOW 21 exploitation of children in the Philippines, but, as the district court found, there is no evidence that “law enforcement was involved in or participated” in Yahoo’s investigations or that “law enforcement sought or received any assistance from Yahoo’s personnel in conducting its investigation outside of legal process.” Yahoo’s conduct was permissible, and it did not need approval from law enforcement to search Rosenow’s account and share any content it found that evidenced criminal activity. Yahoo had a contractual right under the terms of its privacy policy, to which Rosenow necessarily agreed, “to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities” or “violations of Yahoo’s terms of use.” See Cleaveland, 38 F.3d at 1093–94 (finding insufficient governmental action because the private entity had the authority to search customer property under a customer service agreement); United States v. Miller, 688 F.2d 652, 657 (9th Cir. 1982). Nor was this a situation in which Yahoo was spurred into investigating Rosenow by the government or in which the government incentivized, directed, or encouraged Yahoo to continue its investigatory efforts after Yahoo initially informed law enforcement about its concerns related to some of its users. Quite the opposite. The record shows that Yahoo initiated its investigation due to information that it received from another private company. And it continued in its efforts primarily, if not entirely, because it was concerned that the government might drop the ball and not take sufficient action to address the ongoing sexual exploitation of children that Yahoo had uncovered. For its part, Facebook was not independently proactive in searching Rosenow’s accounts in the same way that Yahoo was, but it nonetheless acted volitionally when it conducted its searches. As the district court found, the FBI 22 UNITED STATES V. ROSENOW issued a preservation request stating that it had “child safety” concerns related to Rosenow’s account, but it “did not request that Facebook conduct any search or initiate any internal investigation into Rosenow’s accounts.” Rather, Facebook’s internal policies required it to review Rosenow’s accounts for inappropriate material because Facebook had received notice from law enforcement that conduct threatening child safety could be occurring in Rosenow’s accounts. The government’s preservation request triggered Facebook’s internal investigation policy, but Facebook independently chose to search Rosenow’s accounts and take corrective action after discovering content that violated its terms of use. Accordingly, we conclude that the government’s involvement with Yahoo’s and Facebook’s internal searches “was not so extensive as to trigger Fourth Amendment scrutiny.” Cleaveland, 38 F.3d at 1094. The dissent notes that the government did nothing to discourage Yahoo’s internal searches and subsequent reports. True, but that is immaterial here. The Fourth Amendment does not require government officials to discourage private actors from conducting searches that they have a legal basis to perform. Compare id. (“There was no reason why the detective should have restrained [the employee] or discouraged him in his search because [the employee] never exceeded his authority under the Customer Service Agreement to go on to the property and inspect the meter.” (cleaned up)); Miller, 688 F.2d at 657 (“Because [private actor] had not proposed to do anything illegal, we see no reason why the officers should have restrained him or discouraged him from visiting [suspect’s] property.”) with Walther, 652 F.2d at 793 & n.2 (finding acquiescence where the government did not discourage an informant from actively engaging in illegal searches with the expectation of a reward); United States v. Reed, 15 F.3d 928, 932 (9th Cir. UNITED STATES V. ROSENOW 23 1994) (finding acquiescence where the government “made no attempt to discourage” a hotel owner from searching “beyond what was required to protect hotel property.”). The constitution limits the government. Nothing in our precedent establishes that a private party becomes a government actor simply because the government knows about and does not prevent such party from engaging in legally permissible conduct. This is particularly true where government actors are not even present during the search. Cf. Cleaveland, 38 F.3d at 1094; Reed, 15 F.3d at 932 (noting the significance of a “legitimate motive” for “private searches done in the presence of police officers” (emphasis added)). In the circumstances presented here, the government simply was not a “participant” or an “encourager” of the ESPs’ private conduct. Walther, 652 F.2d at 791. In so holding, we do not suggest that government knowledge and acquiescence is established only if a private party’s conduct is illegal. We emphasize only that unless a private party’s search is illegal or based on an illegitimate motive, our precedent requires “active participation or encouragement” by the government before state action will be found. Id. at 792 (emphasis added).
In analyzing the second requirement—the private party’s intent in searching—we look to whether it acted to “assist law enforcement efforts,” or whether it had a “legitimate, independent motivation to further its own ends.” Cleaveland, 38 F.3d at 1094 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Under our precedent, a private party’s interest in preventing criminal activity, on its own, is not a legitimate, independent motivation to search. Reed, 15 F.3d at 932 (“[I]f crime prevention could be an independent private motive, searches by private parties would never 24 UNITED STATES V. ROSENOW trigger Fourth Amendment protection.”); but see Cameron, 699 F.3d at 638 (“It is certainly the case that combating child pornography is a government interest. However, this does not mean that Yahoo cannot voluntarily choose to have the same interest.”). However, as long as a legitimate, independent motivation is established, “that motivation is not negated by any dual motive to detect or prevent crime or assist the police, or by the presence of the police nearby during the search.” Cleaveland, 38 F.3d at 1094. Here, the record establishes that Yahoo and Facebook investigated Rosenow’s accounts to further their own legitimate, independent motivations. See Young, 153 F.3d at 1080–81. As the district court found, both companies have legitimate business reasons for purging child pornography and exploitation from their platforms, and they acted in furtherance of those reasons when they investigated Rosenow. Yahoo’s Director of Threat Investigations and Intelligence testified that it is “very bad for [Yahoo’s] brand” if its services are viewed as “a haven for child pornography or child exploitation or sex trafficking.” He also stated that “[r]idding our products and services of child abuse images is critically important to protecting our users, our products, our brand, and our business interests.” Finally, he stated that Yahoo has a direct financial interest in keeping child pornography off its platforms because Yahoo does not want to lose advertising opportunities or be blocked from app stores. A Facebook analyst familiar with that company’s internal search policies likewise explained that Facebook “has a business purpose in keeping its platform safe and free from harmful content and conduct . . . that sexually exploits children,” which is why Facebook prohibits “content that sexually exploits or endangers children.” She testified that UNITED STATES V. ROSENOW 25 Facebook’s policy of conducting limited review of accounts in cases indicating child exploitation is “to keep [its] platform safe and so users will continue to use [its] platform.” This case is analogous to Cleaveland, where police waited while an electricity company’s employee investigated the meter of a customer that was suspected of diverting power. 38 F.3d at 1093–94. The employee asked the police to accompany him to the customer’s home because of safety concerns and, “if his inspection uncovered the likelihood of a power diversion, he wanted the police to be able to get a warrant to search the house to confirm the power theft.” Id. at 1093. Although the police used evidence from the company’s search to obtain a warrant, we found insufficient government action to implicate the Fourth Amendment because, in part, the motive “to recover money for [the electricity company’s] loss of power” was a “legitimate, independent motive apart from” any interest in “assist[ing] the police in capturing the power thief.” Id. at 1094. So, too, the ESPs’ desire to purge child pornography from their platforms and enforce the terms of their user agreements is a legitimate, independent motive apart from any interest that the ESPs had in assisting the government in apprehending Rosenow. In so holding, we again note that our decision is consistent with each of our sister circuits to have considered this issue. See Miller, 982 F.3d at 419 (“Companies like Google have business reasons to make these efforts to remove child pornography from their systems.”); Ringland, 966 F.3d at 736 (“Google did not act as a government agent because it scanned its users’ emails volitionally and out of its own private business interests. Google did not become a government agent merely because 26 UNITED STATES V. ROSENOW it had a mutual interest in eradicating child pornography from its platform.”); Cameron, 699 F.3d at 638. The dissent argues that Yahoo did not have an independent motivation for searching Rosenow’s account because, by failing to preserve images sent via its Messenger service, Yahoo could not close the account under its user agreement and, therefore, depended on law enforcement to further its interests. Dissent at 40–42. We disagree. First, it was not a foregone conclusion at the outset of Yahoo’s search that it would not find any images that would permit it to close Rosenow’s account without law enforcement involvement. While Yahoo did not retain images sent through its Messenger service during the relevant period, it did retain its users’ Messenger profile pictures and images sent by users through its email service. Yahoo’s searches included these locations where images were retained. In fact, during the search activity that identified Rosenow, Yahoo found prohibited childexploitation images in other users’ email accounts and Messenger profile pictures, and it disabled those users’ accounts without any involvement by law enforcement. Second, a private party’s otherwise legitimate, independent motivation is not rendered invalid just because law enforcement assistance may further its interests. 5 5 In arguing otherwise, the dissent relies primarily on Ferguson, 532 U.S. at 82–84. However, Ferguson concerned warrantless searches by state actors under the “special needs” exception to the warrant requirement. There, a state hospital adopted a “Management of Drug Abuse During Pregnancy” policy and attempted “to use the threat of arrest and prosecution in order to force women into [substance abuse] treatment.” Id. at 71–72, 84. Law enforcement had “extensive involvement” in developing the policy. Id. at 84. Of course, under such UNITED STATES V. ROSENOW 27 Cleaveland demonstrates this point. While the electric company had a legitimate business interest in preventing power theft, it specifically requested that law enforcement be present when it inspected its customer’s meter in part because it “wanted the police to be able to get a warrant and search the house to confirm the power theft.” 38 F.3d at 1093 (emphasis added). This suggests that further action beyond its inspection of the meter was needed to either prevent further theft, recover against the customer, or both. Had the electric company been able to accomplish its business objective without assistance, it would not have needed law enforcement at the ready to get a warrant and search the customer’s home. Likewise, in Miller the private actor had an independent interest in recovering his stolen trailer, but he relied on law enforcement to act after he entered the defendant’s property and located his trailer. 6 688 F.2d at 657–58. Our conclusion is also consistent with Reed because there the hotel owner expressly admitted that his only circumstances, the state may not rely on the “ultimate goal” of substance abuse treatment to justify warrantless searches. But Ferguson is flatly distinguishable from this case where a private actor is searching its own platform consistent with the terms of its user contract. 6 Even if were we to accept the dissent’s position that reliance on government assistance invalidates an otherwise legitimate, independent motivation, law enforcement intervention was not Yahoo’s only available means for preventing Rosenow from continuing to engage in prohibited conduct. Yahoo’s Director of Threat Investigations and Intelligence testified that the company has several ways to prevent child exploitation on its platform: deactivating accounts; making law enforcement referrals for arrests; and pursuing civil remedies, including lawsuits and “direct requests that [it] serve[s] via process servers to get people to stop engaging in activities.” Thus, Yahoo was not dependent on the government to further its goals. 28 UNITED STATES V. ROSENOW motivation for searching the defendant’s room was to “help police gather proof that [the defendant] was using his room to deal narcotics.” 15 F.3d at 931. Unlike in Cleaveland and Miller, the hotel owner had no independent motivation for searching his customer’s room. However, in invalidating the search in that case, we indicated that if the hotel owner had entered the room for an independent purpose—such as ensuring that hotel property had not been damaged—and had not searched “beyond what was required to protect hotel property,” the search may not have been improper. See id. at 931. For these reasons, we conclude that there was insufficient governmental involvement in Yahoo’s and Facebook’s private searches of Rosenow’s accounts to trigger Fourth Amendment protection. 2. Did the government’s preservation requests and subpoenas violate Rosenow’s right to privacy? Rosenow also argues that he had a right to privacy in his digital data and that the government’s preservation requests and subpoenas, submitted without a warrant, violated the Fourth Amendment. We disagree. a. Were the preservation requests unconstitutional seizures? Acting pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 2703(f), which requires an ESP “to preserve records and other evidence in its possession pending the issuance of a court order or other process,” the government directed Yahoo on three separate occasions to preserve records related to Rosenow’s private communications. Rosenow contends that these requests were an unconstitutional seizure of his property. UNITED STATES V. ROSENOW 29 A “seizure” of property requires “some meaningful interference [by the government,] with an individual’s possessory interests in [his] property.” Jacobsen, 466 U.S. at 113. Here, the preservation requests themselves, which applied only retrospectively, did not meaningfully interfere with Rosenow’s possessory interests in his digital data because they did not prevent Rosenow from accessing his account. Nor did they provide the government with access to any of Rosenow’s digital information without further legal process. It also is worth noting that Rosenow consented to the ESPs honoring preservation requests from law enforcement under the ESPs’ terms of use. Thus, we agree with the district court that these requests did not amount to an unreasonable seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
In addition to the preservation requests, the government issued subpoenas to Facebook for Rosenow’s basic subscriber and IP information under 18 U.S.C. § 2703(c)(2). Relying on Carpenter, Rosenow contends that, because these subpoenas were issued without a warrant supported by probable cause, they were unconstitutional searches. In addition to cabining “physical[] intru[sions] on a constitutionally protected area,” the Fourth Amendment protects “certain expectations of privacy.” Carpenter, 138 S. Ct. at 2213 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). “When an individual seeks to preserve something as private, and his expectation of privacy is one that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable, we have held that official intrusion into that private sphere generally qualifies as a search and requires a warrant supported by probable cause.” Id. (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). However, in what is commonly referred to as the third-party doctrine, 30 UNITED STATES V. ROSENOW the Supreme Court “consistently has held that a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties.” Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 743–44 (1979) (holding that the defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the phone numbers he dialed from his home phone because he necessarily shared those numbers with the phone company to make a call); see United States v. Miller, 425 U.S. 435, 440–442 (1976) (holding that the defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in his banking business records because he voluntarily shared that information with the bank). In Carpenter, the Court declined to extend Smith and Miller to a warrantless subpoena of cell phone site records, which revealed the defendant’s location over the course of 127 days whenever he used his cell phone. 138 S. Ct. at 2212–14, 2217. Instead, the Court held that the subpoena seeking this information required a warrant, explaining that “an individual maintains a legitimate expectation of privacy in the record of his physical movements as captured through [cell phone surveillance technology]” even if that information is shared with third parties. Id. at 2217. Recognizing the intersection between the third-party doctrine and a separate line of cases addressing a person’s expectation of privacy in physical location and movements, the Court established that, “in the rare case where the suspect has a legitimate privacy interest in records held by a third party,” the government must obtain a warrant before issuing a subpoena absent exigent circumstances. Id. at 2215–16, 2222–23. Rosenow argues that, under Carpenter, the government’s subpoenas directing Facebook to disclose his basic subscriber and log-in information violated the Fourth UNITED STATES V. ROSENOW 31 Amendment because he has a legitimate expectation of privacy in this digital data. 7 But Carpenter is distinguishable. 8 Unlike cell-site location, which implicates a long line of precedent recognizing a defendant’s reasonable “expectation of privacy in his physical location and movements,” id. at 2215, a defendant “ha[s] no expectation of privacy in . . . IP addresses” or basic subscriber information because internet users “should know that this information is provided to and used by Internet service providers for the specific purpose of directing the routing of information,” United States. v. Forrester, 512 F.3d 500, 510 (9th Cir. 2008); see also United States v. Ulbricht, 858 F.3d 71, 97 (2d Cir. 2017), abrogation on other grounds recognized by United States v. Zodhiates, 901 F.3d 137, 143–44 (2d Cir. 2018); 9 United 7 Rosenow also argues that he has a reasonable expectation of privacy in his private online messages. Because we conclude that Yahoo’s and Facebook’s searches of his messages were not governmental action, we need not reach this issue. See Jacobsen, 466 U.S. at 113. 8 The Court in Carpenter emphasized that its holding was narrow, limited to the specific question presented in that case. 138 S. Ct. at 2220. We decline to broaden the application of Carpenter to the novel circumstances presented here. 9 In Ulbricht, the Second Circuit held first that it was bound by the broad rule that a party has no privacy interest in any information disclosed to third parties. 858 F.3d at 96–97. That court later recognized that the Supreme Court has abrogated that rule, in part, in Carpenter. See Zodhiates, 901 F.3d at 143–44; United States v. Chambers, 751 F. App’x 44, 46 (2d Cir. 2018). But Ulbricht also held, in the alternative, that even if the broad rule were abrogated in the future, the disclosure of IP addresses does not raise privacy concerns because “no reasonable person could maintain a privacy interest in that sort of information.” 858 F.3d at 97. We cite Ulbricht for that holding, which still stands. 32 UNITED STATES V. ROSENOW States v. Caira, 833 F.3d 803, 806 (7th Cir. 2016). Specifically, in Forrester we analogized IP addresses and email to/from lines to the “information people put on the outside of mail,” which the Supreme Court has long held can be searched without a warrant because it “is voluntarily transmitted to third parties”; therefore, there is no legitimate expectation of privacy in such information. 512 F.3d at 511. This basic information differs from the content of email messages and other private communications, which are analogous to the sealed contents of mail, which the government does need a warrant to search. Id. Here, the subpoenas did not request any communication content from Rosenow’s accounts, and the government did not receive any such content in response to its subpoenas. Everyone involved knew that additional legal process was required before the government could obtain that information. Thus, as in Forrester, Rosenow did not have a legitimate expectation of privacy in the limited digital data sought in the government’s subpoenas. 3. Did the search warrant lack probable cause? Finally, Rosenow argues that the government’s search warrant affidavit failed to establish probable cause because it did not include any images of child pornography or any reasonable factual descriptions of such images. Probable cause exists if, “based on the totality of the circumstances, there is a ‘fair probability’ that evidence of a crime may be found.” United States v. Perkins, 850 F.3d 1109, 1119 (9th Cir. 2017) (citation omitted). Inclusion of illicit images is not required to establish probable cause. “[A] judge may properly issue a warrant based on factual descriptions of an image.” United States v. Battershell, 457 F.3d 1048, 1052 (9th Cir. 2006). UNITED STATES V. ROSENOW 33 Here, the government’s affidavit included excerpts from Rosenow’s messages with adolescent girls in the Philippines, demonstrating that he took and kept illicit pictures and videos of his sex tourism. For example, in one of Rosenow’s Facebook chats, he sends a girl nude photos he had previously taken of her and states, “I am always looking at your pictures on my phone . . . and I want more.” In another chat, he negotiates sex acts with a girl and states, “baby, I want to take a video too.” The affidavit also described Yahoo’s internal investigation and the resulting findings that Rosenow was negotiating, purchasing, and producing images and videos of child sexual exploitation, as well as the information that Facebook reported to NCMEC after searching Rosenow’s accounts. These descriptions include an account of Rosenow’s communications with girls in the Philippines, wherein Rosenow describes in graphic detail the sexual activities that he wanted to do with them and confirms that he wanted to record those activities. In these circumstances, the omission of pornographic images was not an intentional misrepresentation or material omission. See Perkins, 850 F.3d at 1118–19 (finding agent acted improperly by withholding images in his possession and misrepresenting their content where there was a question whether the images were pornographic). Nor were the FBI agent’s multiple, detailed statements analyzing Rosenow’s messages and travel patterns merely “boilerplate description[s]” or “generalized statement[s]” of “a child pornography collector.” Id. at 1120. Thus, we conclude, as did the district court, that the affidavit supporting the search warrant established a “fair probability” that child pornography would be found on Rosenow’s electronic devices. See Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 238 (1983). 34 UNITED STATES V. ROSENOW