Court Opinion

ID: 9498749
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:27:02.865892+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:59:02.973335
License: Public Domain

KLEINFELD, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent. The careful decision by the panel1 was correct and should be left alone. There was no probable cause because there was no evidence that Gourde had downloaded any child pornography.
Is the holding of the majority opinion that if a person has subscribed to a site that has legal and illegal material, that suffices as probable cause for a search warrant? That if a person has paid money to look at material that is illegal to possess, he probably possesses it? If the holding is narrower than these formulations, everyone’s computer would be safer were the narrowing restrictions made clear. If it is not, the majority opinion is dangerous to everyone’s privacy. In my view, the majority errs in concluding that there was probable cause for a search because its inferences depend on unarticu-lated assumptions that do not make sense. The majority implicitly assumes that a person who likes something probably possesses it, even if possession is against the law.
The importance of this case is considerable because, for most people, their computers are their most private spaces. People commonly talk about the bedroom as a very private space, yet when they have parties, all the guests — including perfect strangers — are invited to toss their coats on the bed. But if one of those guests is caught exploring the host’s computer, that will be his last invitation.
There are just too many secrets on people’s computers, most legal, some embarrassing, and some potentially tragic in their implications, for loose liberality in allowing search warrants. Emails and history links may show that someone is or*1078dering medication for a disease being kept secret even from family members. Or they may show that someone’s child is being counseled by parents for a serious problem that is none of anyone else’s business. Or a married mother of three may be carrying on a steamy email correspondence with an old high school boyfriend. Or an otherwise respectable, middle-aged gentleman may be looking at dirty pictures. Just as a conscientious public official may be hounded out of office because a party guest found a homosexual magazine when she went to the bathroom at his house, people’s lives may be ruined because of legal but embarrassing materials found on their computers. And, in all but the largest metropolitan areas, it really does not matter whether any formal charges ensue — if the police or other visitors find the material, it will be all over town and hinted at in the newspaper within a few days.
Nor are secrets the only problem. Warrants ordinarily direct seizure, not just search, and computers are often shared by family members. Seizure of a shared family computer may, though unrelated to the law enforcement purpose, effectively confiscate a professor’s book, a student’s almost completed Ph.D. thesis, or a business’s accounts payable, and receivable. People cannot get their legitimate work done if their computer is at the police station because of someone else’s suspected child pornography downloads. Sex with children is so disgusting to most of us that we may be too liberal in allowing searches when the government investigates child pornography cases. The privacy of people’s computers is too important to let it be eroded by sexual disgust.
The question an issuing magistrate should ask of a search warrant is fairly stated by the majority: considering the “totality of the circumstances,” is there a “fair probability” that what is being looked for will be found at the location to be searched? 2 This is a common sense, practical question that the magistrate is supposed to ask before issuing a search warrant.3
The answer has to come from the statute defining the crimes at issue and the search warrant application. Common sense questions for the issuing magistrate to ask are “what are the police looking for?” and “why do they think they will find evidence of it there?” The application for the search warrant says that the FBI wanted to search Gourde’s home for “evidence of possession, receipt and transmission of child pornography” in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 2252 and 2252A. So the “what are you looking for?” question is answered precisely and satisfactorily.
The serious, unavoidable next question that an issuing magistrate is obligated to ask is “why do you think there is a fair probability of finding such evidence on Gourde’s computer?” Here is where the affidavit fails to make out the case. It establishes only that a website, “Lolita-gurls.com,” had criminal child pornography on it — along with much legally permissible material — and that Gourde had paid $19.95 to subscribe to it. That is not enough, as a common sense matter, because: (1) Gourde might have been using the website to look at the legal rather than the illegal material, and (2) even if Gourde subscribed just because he liked to look at illegal child pornography, common sense suggests that he also liked to stay out of jail, so he would look but avoid possessing.
I generally agree with the careful analysis in the panel opinion about the mixed nature of the site.4 In this dissent, I focus *1079mostly on the additional point that evidence of an attraction to child pornography does not support an inference that a person possesses it. The affidavit sets out ample probable cause to infer, at least if one knows of Vladmir Nabakov’s novel, that “Lolitagurls.com” was a purveyor of child pornography: its name, its claim to have over 1,000 “pictures of girls age 12-17,” its reference to “naked lolita girls,” and the pictures of “nude and partially dressed young girls, some prepubescent” on the free tour pages promoting subscriptions, and the images posted in the subscriber section of which “some depicted the lascivious display of the breast and genitalia of girls under the age of 18.”
On the other hand, there were indications that supported the inference that some or most subscribers would want the site for access to legal pornography: the promotional language said “This site is in full compliance with United States Code Title 18 Part I Chapter 110 Section 2256”; the reference to pictures of “naked lolita girls” was in a different sentence from “girls age 12-17”; the price, $19.95 a month, was not extraordinarily high as one might expect of contraband; much of the material on the site (the affidavit does not say whether it is a small portion, a large portion, or almost all) was what the FBI agent’s affidavit said was legal pornography, consisting of “adult pornography ... and child erotica.” Thus a person might well subscribe to the site to look at and download legal material. The subscriber might well think — knowing the proclivity of merchants for puffing their goods and of the ability of models to make themselves look younger than they are — that he would have the pleasure of looking at the sort of pornography that appealed to him without the legal risk of looking at anything that involved violation of federal law.
Nevertheless, for purposes of argument, let us assume that the subscriber would think that the assurance of lawfulness and all the legal material were mere window dressing. Let us further assume that as a matter of common sense, subscription to Lolitagurls.com suffices in the “totality of circumstances” to establish that there is a “fair probability”5 that a subscriber has a perverted interest in looking at criminal child pornography. Though satisfied from the affidavit that Gourde probably had this perverted sexual desire, an issuing magistrate should still have rejected the warrant because it still did not establish a “fair probability” that evidence of a child pornography crime would be found on Gourde’s computer.
The reason he could not be assumed to possess child pornography is that possession of child pornography is a very serious crime and the affidavit did not say he had downloaded any. He could use the site to look at child pornography without downloading it, a reasonable assumption in the absence of evidence that he had downloaded images. Common sense suggests that everyone, pervert or not, has the desire to stay out of jail. The ordinary desire to stay out of jail is a factor that must be considered in the totality of circumstances. It would be irrational to assume that an individual is indifferent between subjecting himself to criminal sanctions and avoiding them, when he can attain his object while avoiding them. To commit the crime for which the warrant sought evidence, one has to do something more than look: he must ship, produce, or at the least knowingly possess. The two child pornography statutes at issue do not say that vieiving child pornography is a crime. Congress could perhaps make it a crime to pay to view such images, but it did not.
*1080Section 2252 provides penalties for one who “knowingly transports or ships,” “knowingly receives,” “knowingly reproduces ... for distribution,” “knowingly sells,” or “knowingly possesses with intent to sell.”6 Section 2252A provides penalties for one who “knowingly mails, or transports or ships,” “knowingly receives or distributes,” “knowingly reproduces ... for distribution,” and so forth.7 There is *1081nothing in either (Text continued on page 2388) statute that criminalizes looking. Though the spirit and purpose of the law is doubtless to stamp out the child pornography industry, criminal laws have no penumbras or emanations. There is no principle more essential to liberty, or more deeply imbued in our law, than that what is not prohibited, is permitted. That principle, and due process concerns, are why criminal statutes are strictly construed; that is, “[a] criminal law is not to be read expansively to include what is not plainly embraced within the language of the statute.” 8
About the closest the statutes get to mere looking is the phrase “knowingly receives.” Though precedent does not settle the question, it does not square with common sense to treat looking as knowingly receiving. True, electrons have to turn a lot of bits into ones and zeroes on the looker’s computer to enable him to look, and he has received the electronic signals that do this. But that is not much different from light waves from a picture stimu*1082lating rods and cones on the retina. One would not say that a person who had looked at the Mona Lisa at the Louvre had “received” it, even though the reflected light waves had altered electronic signals to the optic nerve from the retina, and a recollection was stored in the brain. The government tries to make something of the computer browser’s cache, but that cannot be the same thing as “receiving” because the cache is an area of memory and disk space available to the browser software, not to the computer user. If the computer user accesses the same page on the internet again before the cache is overwritten, the browser software will display the page from the cache to save download time and web traffic, but the user ordinarily cannot display the picture offline from the cache. To view the picture without accessing the site, the computer user usually has to take the additional affirmative step of downloading and saving it as a JPEG, PDF, or in some other user-accessible form. The concept of “receiving” implies possession. Possession requires dominion and control, a concept well understood from drug and firearms cases.9
The affidavit does focus on the tendency of a collector of child pornography to preserve the images collected. That squares with common sense, because collectors, whether of legal or illegal items, are by virtue of being collectors unlikely to throw items in their collections away. The portions of the affidavit speaking to the habits of collectors support the inference that if Gourde had downloaded images he probably still had them, even though his subscription ended when the site was terminated four months before the search.
But was Gourde a collector? The search warrant affidavit has one paragraph stating that there was probable cause to believe Gourde was a collector. All it says is that Gourde joined the website, he “could” have easily downloaded images, he did not cancel his subscription, and he would have to have viewed images of naked prepub es-cent females with descriptive language saying they were 12 to 17 years old.10 That is not enough for probable cause that Gourde was a collector.
The affidavit does not claim that subscribers to publicly available websites like this tend to be collectors (and were such a claim made the foundation for it would need examination), or that collectors acquire their collections from public websites like Lolitagurls.com as opposed to private emails. The question might be raised, “why wouldn’t they?” The answer is that *1083possession was and is a serious crime, while simple viewing is not. The statutes quoted earlier set out penalties ranging from five to forty years with mandatory mínimums as high as fifteen years for the various child pornography offenses and offenders denoted in them.11 These penalties impose a high price on collecting, likely to deter many people even if they might like to collect.
The search warrant affidavit also contains one screaming silence: it does not say that the server showed any downloads to Gourde’s computer. The affidavit, signed in May 2001, establishes that the FBI took the Lolitagurls.com smut merchant’s computer in January 2001. There was plenty of time in these several months to go through it to determine what addresses downloaded images, yet there is no mention that Gourde’s address received any. To an experienced lawyer or judge, for whom silences are loud where information would ordinarily be provided, that is like an absence of skid marks at an accident scene or a personal injury complaint alleging grievous physical injury but no medical expenses or wage loss. The stronger inference from this silence in the affidavit, is not that Gourde did download, but that the FBI looked and found that Gourde’s computer did not receive downloads.
This negative inference is supported by the testimony at the suppression hearing, where the FBI agent acknowledged that “It’s fair to say that a record of the operations of this website, the images it contained, when and if they were sent out, transmitted, emailed, that information could have been traced from the Iowa server.” He also conceded that the information available from the server “would include information that would inform the F.B.I. about whether somebody downloaded images from the site, when they downloaded them, or other information indicating exactly what was sent from Iowa.” There.was nothing in the affidavit establishing that Gourde ever downloaded anything from Lolitagurls.com, and the silence suggested that the FBI had checked the download history and found that he had not.
A careful issuing magistrate would have to ask himself the question, “why should I believe Gourde has such images, that is, that he is a collector?” And the common sense answer would have to be, particularly in the absence of evidence of downloads, “Not unless he is a fool, since he can look without criminal risk, and would likely be deterred from collecting by the heavy sanctions applied to it.” Part of the “totality of circumstances” is the legal environment in which the individual lives. Common sense suggests that a lot of people would do a lot of things that they might like to do — going '90 on an empty freeway, paying less taxes than are owed, crossing an intersection on a red light when there is no traffic, downloading pirated music on the internet — were it not for the legal trouble they would generate for themselves by doing them.
Ordinarily the criminal law takes seriously the effectiveness of deterrence. A sentencing court is commanded by Congress to assure that the sentence “afford adequate deterrence to criminal conduct.” 12 All of the people are not deterred all of the time, but most people are deterred most of the time. Not everybody is deterred from buying $250,000 cars by the high prices either, but most people are, so it would not be reasonable to assume that a multimillionaire car lover probably has a Ferrari. Applying common sense to the totality of circumstances, the issuing magistrate would have to suppose that while *1084Gourde might well have a perverted sexual interest in little girls, he would also have the normal desire to stay out of prison. He could satisfy both desires by looking but not possessing. If he had a fast internet connection, he could look online about as fast as he could look at images on his hard drive. Considering the legal risk if he downloaded images, it would take something more, such as a statement in the affidavit that the smut purveyor’s computer showed that Gourde’s computer had received downloads, to establish probable cause that Gourde collected the images. Why would he collect images on his hard drive when, as a subscriber, he could look whenever he wanted without the legal risk? The affidavit provides experienced judgment (though not scientific in the sense that Daubert13 and Kumho Tire14 require) that collectors horde their collectibles, but no probable cause to suggest that Gourde was a collector.
The cases the majority cites generally have factors in addition to site membership to support an inference of collecting illegal pictures — which is the crime for which the warrant sought evidence — as opposed to non-criminal looking. In those cases, the inferences were based on individualized facts, not mere profiling. In United States v. Froman, the defendant not only joined the child pornography e-group “Candy-man,” but also identified himself with aliases announcing his perverted sexual interest in little girls.15 The internet group in United States v. Martin was determined to be “primarily ... for effecting illegal activity,”16 but Lolitagurls.com was, as explained above, more ambiguous. In our own precedent, we used the collector profile when the defendant had a personal website that demonstrated an “extreme interest in young children.”17 Unlike each of these cases, there is no evidence particular to Gourde to suggest that he is a collector of illegal images.18
The majority concludes that the affidavit made out probable cause by assuming that anyone who subscribes to an internet site with both legal and illegal material must collect illegal material from the site. This assumption stacks inference upon inference until the conclusion is too weak to support the invasion of privacy entailed by a search warrant. “[W]ith each succeeding inference, the last reached is less and less likely to be true.”19 The privacy of a person with a sexual perversion that might make him a danger to our children seems by itself an unlikely candidate for concern. But the overwhelming importance of the privacy of people’s computers makes it essential to assure that — even in this ugly corner of human perversion — probable cause seriously interpreted remain a prerequisite for search warrants.
Therefore, I respectfully dissent.

. United States v. Gourde, 382 F.3d 1003 (9th Cir.2004).

.Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 230, 103 S.Ct. 2317, 76 L.Ed.2d 527 (1983).

. Id. at 231, 103 S.Ct. 2317.

. Gourde, 382 F.3d at 1011-12.

. Gates, 462 U.S. at 236, 103 S.Ct. 2317.

. § 2252. Certain activities relating to material involving the sexual exploitation of minors
(a) Any person who—
(1) knowingly transports or ships in interstate or foreign commerce by any means including by computer or mails, any visual depiction, if—
(A) the producing of such visual depiction involves the use of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct; and
(B) such visual depiction is of such conduct;
(2) knowingly receives, or distributes, any visual depiction that has been mailed, or has been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce, or which contains materials which have been mailed or so shipped or transported, by any means including by computer, or knowingly reproduces any visual depiction for distribution in interstate or foreign commerce or through the mails, if—
(A) the producing of such visual depiction involves the use of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct; and
(B) such visual depiction is of such conduct;
(3) either—
(A) in the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States, or on any land or building owned by, leased to, or otherwise used by or under the control of the Government of the United States, or in the Indian country as defined in section 1151 of this title, knowingly sells or possesses with intent to sell any visual depiction; or
(B) knowingly sells or possesses with intent to sell any visual depiction that has been mailed, or has been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce, or which was produced using materials which have been mailed or so shipped or transported, by any means, including by computer, if—
(i) the producing of such visual depiction involves the use of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct; and
(ii) such visual depiction is of such conduct; or
(4) either- — •
(A) in the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States, or on any land or building owned by, leased to, or otherwise used by or under the control of the Government of the United States, or in the Indian country as defined in section 1151 of this title, knowingly possesses 1 or more books, magazines, periodicals, films, video tapes, or other matter which contain any visual depiction; or
(B) knowingly possesses 1 or more books, magazines, periodicals, films, video tapes, or other matter which contain any visual depiction that has been mailed, or has been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce, or which was produced using materials which have been mailed or so shipped or transported, by any means including by computer, if—
(i) the producing of such visual depiction involves the use of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct; and
(ii) such visual depiction is of such conduct;
shall be punished as provided in subsection (b) of this section.

. § 2252A. Certain activities relating to material constituting or containing child pornography
(a) Any person who—
(1) knowingly mails, or transports or ships in interstate or foreign commerce by any means, including by computer, any child pornography;
(2) knowingly receives or distributes—
(A) any child pornography that has been mailed, or shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce by any means, including by computer; or
(B) any material that contains child pornography that has been mailed, or shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce by any means, including by computer; -
(3) knowingly—
(A) reproduces any child pornography for distribution through the mails, or in interstate or foreign commerce by any means, including by computer; or
*1081(B) advertises, promotes, presents, distributes, or solicits through the mails, or in interstate or foreign commerce by any means, including by computer, any material or purported material in a manner that reflects the belief, or that is intended to cause another to believe, that the material or purported material is, or contains—
(i) an obscene visual depiction of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct; or
(ii) a visual depiction of an actual minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct;
(4) either' — ■
(A) in the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States, or on any land or building owned by, leased to, or otherwise used by or under the control of the United States Government, or in the Indian country (as defined in section 1151), knowingly sells or possesses with the intent to sell any child pornography; or
(B) knowingly sells or possesses with the intent to sell any child pornography that has been mailed, or shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce by any means, including by computer, or that was produced using materials that have been mailed, or shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce by any means, including by computer;
(5) either—
(A) in the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States, or on any land or building owned by, leased to, or otherwise used by or under the control of the United States Government, or in the Indian country (as defined in section 1151), knowingly possesses any book, magazine, periodical, film, videotape, computer disk, or any other material that contains an image of child pornography; or
(B) knowingly possesses any book, magazine, periodical, film, videotape, computer disk, or any other material that contains an image of child pornography that has been mailed, or shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce by any means, including by computer, or that was produced using materials that have been mailed, or shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce by any means, including by computer; or
(6)knowingly distributes, offers, sends, or provides to a minor any visual depiction, including any photograph, film, video, picture, or computer generated image or picture, whether made or produced by electronic, mechanical, or other means, where such visual depiction is, or appears to be, of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct' — ■
(A) that has been mailed, shipped, or transported in interstate or foreign commerce by any means, including by computer;
(B) that was produced using materials that have been mailed, shipped, or transported in interstate or foreign commerce by any means, including by computer; or
(C) which distribution, offer, sending, or provision is accomplished using the mails or by transmitting or causing to be transmitted any wire communication in interstate or foreign commerce, including by computer,
for purposes of inducing or persuading a minor to participate in any activity that is illegal.
shall be punished as provided in subsection (b).

. Kordel v. United States, 335 U.S. 345, 348-49, 69 S.Ct. 106, 93 L.Ed. 52 (1948).

. See United States v. Carrasco, 257 F.3d 1045, 1049 (9th Cir.2001) ("To prove constructive possession, the government must prove a sufficient connection between the defendant and the contraband to support the inference that the defendant exercised dominion and control over the firearms.”).

. Here is the affidavit paragraph 33 in its entirety:
33. The following facts lead me to believe that MICAH GOURDE is a collector of child pornography, and as such is likely to maintain for long periods of time a collection of child pornography and related evidence:
a.GOURDE took steps to affirmatively join the website 'Lolitagurls.com', which advertises pictures of young girls and offers images of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct.
b. GOURDE remained a member of this website for over two months, although once he gained access to the website, he could have easily removed himself from the list of subscribers. During this time, he had access to hundreds of images, including historical postings to the site, which could easily be downloaded during his period of membership.
c. Any time GOURDE would have logged on to this website, he would have had to have viewed images of naked prepubescent females with a caption that described them as twelve to seventeen-year-old girls, yet he did not un-subscribe to this website for at least two months.

. See, 18 U.S.C. §§ 2252(b), 2252A (b).

. 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(2)(B).

. Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579, 113 S.Ct. 2786, 125 L.Ed.2d 469 (1993).

. Kumho Tire Co., Ltd. v. Carmichael, 526 U.S. 137, 119 S.Ct. 1167, 143 L.Ed.2d 238 (1999).

. United States v. Froman, 355, F.3d 882, 890-91 (5th Cir.2002).

. United States v. Martin, 426 F.3d 68, 77 (2nd Cir.2005).

. United States v. Hay, 231 F.3d 630, 634 (9th Cir.2000).

. See Ybarra v. Illinois, 444 U.S. 85, 90, 100 S.Ct. 338, 62 L.Ed.2d 238 (1979) ("a search ... must be supported by probable cause particularized ... to that person").

. United States v. Weber, 923 F.2d 1338, 1345 (9th Cir.1990).