Opinion ID: 2802554
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Law Enforcement Privilege

Text: In evaluating the government’s privilege argument, we agree with the district court’s decision to apply a balancing approach, weighing the government’s concerns against the needs articulated by Pirosko. We have applied this sort of framework before. See United States v. Gazie, 786 F.2d 1166, 1986 WL 16498, at – (6th Cir. 1986) (Table) (applying balancing approach with respect to argument regarding the location of government surveillance equipment). In the context of this case, the government argues that granting Pirosko’s motion to compel would compromise the integrity of its surveillance system and would frustrate future surveillance efforts. Pirosko, on the other hand, contends that the government should have turned over a copy of its software, thereby allowing his experts to determine whether ShareazaLE gives government officials “the ability to manipulate settings or data on the target computer (even unintentionally),” “whether the software allows agents to override shared settings to download files that a normal user would not be able to download,” and “the error rate” associated with the software. Appellant Br. at 18–19. Pirosko cites several cases where No. 14-3402 United States v. Pirosko Page 7 defendants have purportedly been allowed access to the government’s software, including the Ninth Circuit’s decision in United States v. Budziak, 697 F.3d 1105 (9th Cir. 2012). His reliance on these cases is not well taken. In its opinion denying Pirosko’s motion to compel, the district court pointed to a number of reasons why this case was not simply a reiteration of Budziak. Budziak, for instance, had filed multiple motions to compel. “In support of his first two motions to compel, Budziak presented evidence suggesting that the FBI may have only downloaded fragments of child pornography files from his ‘incomplete’ folder, making it ‘more likely’ that he did not knowingly distribute any complete child pornography files.” 697 F.3d at 1112. “In support of his third motion to compel, Budziak submitted evidence suggesting that the FBI agents could have used the EP2P software to override his sharing settings.” Id. Pirosko has failed to produce any such evidence, simply alleging that he might have found such evidence had he been given access to the government’s programs. Tellingly, in Budziak, the Ninth Circuit also noted that, “[a]lthough the government argued that the computer logs it provided Budziak demonstrated that he would not uncover any helpful information through discovery of the software, the declarations of Budziak’s computer forensics expert stated otherwise.” Id. The court then stated, in an accompanying footnote, that This evidence distinguishes the instant case from Chiaradio, where the First Circuit held that the defendant could not demonstrate prejudice resulting from nondisclosure of the EP2P source code. In Chiaradio, the defendant “neither contradicted nor cast the slightest doubt upon” the government’s testimony that the materials it had already provided to him verified that an FBI agent downloaded files containing child pornography from his computer. In contrast, Budziak presented arguments and evidence suggesting that the materials disclosed by the FBI did not resolve all questions relevant to his defense. Id. at n.1 (citations omitted). To summarize, in deciding to deny Pirosko’s motion to compel, the district court had before it the First Circuit’s decision in United States v. Chiaradio, 684 F.3d 265, 278 (1st Cir. 2012), where the defendant did not provide any evidence of government error, and the Ninth Circuit’s decision in Budziak, where the defendant did provide evidence of error. Here, the strongest evidence of error was a single sentence in a letter by Interhack, a firm hired by Pirosko, which stated that “[t]he [government’s] affidavit does not show which tools, which records, or No. 14-3402 United States v. Pirosko Page 8 the means by which those records were created, leaving otherwise answerable questions unanswered.” R. 26-1 (Exh. in Mot. to Compel Disc. at 4) (Page ID #181). That lone allegation is simply not enough to overcome the numerous facts supporting the government’s position that it legitimately obtained child pornography from Pirosko’s shared folders. To be clear, this conclusion should not be read as giving the government a blank check to operate its file-sharing detection software sans scrutiny. As a general matter, it is important that the government’s investigative methods be reliable, both for individual defendants like Pirosko and for the public at large. Still, we think that it is important for the defendant to produce some evidence of government wrongdoing. We have held as much in cases involving more traditional police investigation techniques. See, e.g., United States v. Boxley, 373 F.3d 759, 761 (6th Cir. 2004) (stating that, with respect to dog sniffs, “it is not necessary for the government to show that the dog is accurate one hundred percent of the time, because a very low percentage of false positives is not necessarily fatal to a finding that a drug detection dog is properly trained and certified”) (internal quotation marks omitted). Pirosko has failed to produce any such evidence here, even after receiving the government’s computer logs, which included information on when law enforcement officials were able to connect to his computer and what files they were able to download from his shared folder. Pirosko has, moreover, conceded that he did not turn off his upload settings—he simply argues that his settings allowed for a low rate of downloading, a point that we discuss in greater detail below. It would not have been difficult for Pirosko, armed with this information, to establish some evidence of government wrongdoing, had any such wrongdoing actually occurred: he knew the size of the files being downloaded, the approximate download speed, and the time when the government allegedly downloaded these files. What remains is a simple exercise in arithmetic. Pirosko has either failed to do this exercise or, having done it, has realized that the math simply does not add up. In any event, he has failed to demonstrate that the district court abused its discretion in denying his motion to compel discovery. As a final note, the remaining decisions cited by Pirosko are likewise unavailing. In fact, one of the primary cases relied upon by Pirosko—United States v. Crowe, No. 11 CR 1690 MV (D.N.M. Apr. 3, 2013)—actually points in favor of the government, not Pirosko. In that case, the No. 14-3402 United States v. Pirosko Page 9 district court denied Crowe’s motion to compel discovery, but granted Crowe’s motion for independent evaluation by an expert of the government’s software, pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 16. Id. at 15. Yet in reaching this decision, the district court noted that, “[a]s in Budziak, in this case, Defendant submitted the testimony of his expert witness, Tami Loehrs, who indicated that during her examination of Defendant’s computer, some of the files alleged to have been found by law enforcement in the shared space of Defendant’s computer, were not found there during her analysis.” Id. at 13. Pirosko has, as we have already noted, not submitted any such evidence. More importantly, Crowe’s reliance on Loehrs’s affidavit appears to have been a mistake. In fact, in a subsequent case, United States v. Thomas, Nos. 5:12-cr-37, 44, 97, 2013 WL 6000484 (D. Vt. Nov. 8, 2013), the district court considered and completely discredited Loehrs’s statements. In Thomas, as in Crowe, Loehrs prepared a report summarizing her knowledge of the government’s software. After reviewing this report, the district court stated in Thomas that “Ms. Loehrs’s declarations . . . [we]re misleading in several respects.” Id. at . The district court continued, finding that: As a preface to a list of twenty-five cases identified in her declarations, Ms. Loehrs states; [sic] “I have also learned through hundreds of forensic examinations on cases involving undercover P2P investigations and allegations of child pornography, that files are being identified by law enforcement’s automated software as containing child pornography when, in fact, they do not.” However, none of the cases listed in Ms. Loehrs’s declarations appeared to have resulted in a judicial finding to that effect. Id. (citation omitted). “In her declaration . . . , Ms. Loehrs stated that she did not find the files identified in the Neale search warrant affidavit on Defendant Neale’s computer when she examined it.” Id. Yet she essentially retracted this statement on cross-examination. The district court also noted that “[t]he most troubling aspect of Ms. Loehrs’s expert opinions in this case is her reliance on her work in other cases which was either disproved or rejected.” Id. at . If anything, Crowe and Thomas point in the government’s favor—both cases show that allowing Pirosko access without any evidence of error would needlessly expose the government’s enforcement tools to examination and pointlessly drag out the course of litigation. No. 14-3402 United States v. Pirosko Page 10