Court Opinion

ID: 9692039
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 15:37:46.206614+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:30.044538
License: Public Domain

Justice NIGRO,
dissenting.
The majority holds today that Appellant David Duncan’s privacy rights were not implicated when a police officer obtained the number of a Automatic Teller Machine (“ATM”) card that Duncan had used at a pornography shop, called the bank that had issued the ATM card, asked for the name and address of the individual to whom the card had been issued, and obtained, without a warrant, Duncan’s name and address. For the following reasons, I respectfully disagree and would hold that the information the bank provided to the police fell within the scope of protection afforded by Article 1, Section 8 of the Pennsylvania Constitution.
As the majority acknowledges, this Court held in Commonwealth v. DeJohn, 486 Pa. 32, 403 A.2d 1283, 1291 (1979), that “under Article I, Section 8 of the Pennsylvania Constitution bank customers have a legitimate expectation of privacy in records pertaining to their affairs kept at the bank.” As we explained in DeJohn, quoting from the opinion of the California Supreme Court in Burrows v. Superior Court, 13 Cal.3d 238, 118 Cal.Rptr. 166, 529 P.2d 590, 596 (1974):
For all practical purposes, the disclosure by individuals or business firms of their financial affairs to a bank is not entirely volitional, since it is impossible to participate in the economic life of contemporary society without maintaining a bank account. In the course of such dealings, a depositor reveals many aspects of his personal affairs, opinions, habits and associations. Indeed, the totality of bank records provides a virtual current biography.... [T]he logical extension of the contention that the bank’s ownership of records permits free access to them by any police officer extends far beyond [bank] statements to checks, savings, bonds, loan applications, loan guarantees, and all papers which the customer has supplied to the bank to facilitate the conduct *464of his financial affairs upon the reasonable assumption that the information would remain confidential. To permit a police officer access to these records merely upon his request, without any judicial control as to relevancy or other traditional requirements of legal process, and to allow the evidence to be used in any subsequent criminal prosecution against a defendant, opens the door to a vast and unlimited range of very real abuses of police power.
DeJohn, 403 A.2d at 1289-90 (quoting Burrows, 118 Cal.Rptr. 166, 529 P.2d at 596).
Here, just as DeJohn contemplated, Duncan disclosed to his bank “not entirely volition[ally,]” but rather merely as a consequence of his “participation] in the economic life of contemporary society,” that he had been in a specific pornography shop on a specific date and had attempted to make a purchase there. DeJohn, 403 A.2d at 1289 (citation omitted). This fact regarding his “personal affairs ... habits and associations” was an integral piece of his “virtual current biography” that was in the bank’s exclusive control. Id. (citation omitted). Nevertheless, when the police called to obtain the name and address that corresponded to the anonymous account number utilized in the otherwise anonymous transaction, the bank unquestioningly provided ' that information.1 The majority contends that DeJohn was not implicated by this disclosure, because the bank disclosed nothing more than Duncan’s “mere name and address.” Slip op. at 459, 462-63, 464; see also id. at 462 (characterizing the disclosed information as “totally innocuous”). However, in reality, the bank disclosed much more than that, because it revealed to the police the name and address that corresponded to an anonymous account number, which, in my view, is a quintessential bank record.2 Moreover, just as DeJohn cautioned, disclosing this bank record made *465the police privy to a piece of the bank’s unique store of knowledge regarding Duncan’s “personal affairs ... habits and associations.” 3 Id. As such, in my view, the information the bank revealed is the very information DeJohn prohibits a police officer from obtaining “merely upon his request, without any judicial control as to relevancy or other traditional requirements of legal process,” because to permit unrestricted access would “open[ ] the door to a vast and unlimited range of very real abuses of police power.” Id. at 1290 (citation omitted).
Significantly, there was nothing to prevent the police in this case from obtaining a warrant for bank records showing the *466name and address that corresponded to the ATM card number at issue. In fact, they had done just that to obtain information regarding a second individual who had attempted to use an ATM card at the same pornography shop on the same night that Duncan had done so. The Commonwealth does not attempt to explain why they did not follow the same straightforward steps in obtaining Duncan’s information, when they were clearly able to do so. The majority attempts to downplay this misstep by characterizing the police action as nothing more than a “warrantless phone call.” Slip op. at 1. However, absent “any judicial control as to relevancy or other traditional requirements of legal process” with respect to such phone calls, 403 A.2d at 1290 (citation omitted), there is presumably nothing to stop law enforcement officers from obtaining lists of ATM accounts numbers utilized at select targeted establishments and then telephoning the respective banks to compile a full list of names and addresses of citizens frequenting those establishments. In short, permitting law enforcement officers the luxury of such “warrantless phone calls” necessarily “opens the door to a vast and unlimited range of very real abuses of police power.” Id. (citation omitted).
The majority would nevertheless permit the warrantless search of Duncan’s bank records here in part because it concludes that Duncan did not establish that he had a subjective expectation of privacy in the information provided. However, in my view, Duncan “by his conduct, exhibited] an ‘actual (subjective) expectation of privacy.’ ” Commonwealth v. Oglialoro, 525 Pa. 250, 579 A.2d 1288, 1290 (1990) (emphasis added)(quoting Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 361, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967)). The record reflects that Duncan obtained from the bank a personal ATM card in his own name, and signed an agreement stating that the card was “non-transferable.” (R.R. 22a-23a). As such, it is clear that Duncan understood that he was establishing an exclusive relationship with his bank. Given this record fact, and in the absence of any record evidence that Duncan ever violated the non-transfer agreement or gave access to third parties to his private account information, the record supports the conclu*467sion that Duncan, by his conduct, exhibited a subjective expectation of privacy in the bank records associated with his ATM account.4
I recognize that in modem society, a person’s name and address are freely distributed, as I am reminded each day by the piles of unsolicited mail that appear on my doorstep. Moreover, I am well-aware that:
The address of most persons appears in many public records: voting registration roles, property assessment roles, motor vehicle registration roles, etc., all of which are open to public inspection. They also usually appear in such places as the telephone directory and city directory which are available to public inspection.
Chryst, 793 P.2d at 542 (quoting McNutt v. State Tribune Co., 88 N.M. 162, 538 P.2d 804, 808 (Ct.App.), cert. denied, 88 N.M. 318, 540 P.2d 248 (1975)). However, as explained above, this case does not involve access to an individual’s name and address in a vacuum, or even in conjunction with other non-private information. Rather, it involves account information that was provided to police along with a name and address. Thus, contrary to the majority, I would hold that this information is protected by Article I, Section 8 of the Pennsylvania Constitution and that a bank may not provide a customer’s name and/or address to law enforcement agents when supplied only with information regarding that customer’s otherwise anonymous account activities, unless served with a valid and enforceable warrant.
For the foregoing reasons, I dissent.
Chief Justice CAPPY joins the dissenting opinion.

. Significantly, the bank manager testified that if a non-police officer walked into the bank, and said: “This is a MAC card number; I want the person’s name, address and phone number,” the bank would not turn over that information. (R.R. 26a).

. What the bank did here was the functional equivalent of disseminating a comprehensive list of ATM account holders with their corresponding account numbers. It was not, as the majority suggests, the equiva*465lent of distributing a list of names and addresses of ATM card holders, without any corresponding account information.

. As this case involves not only a name and address, but also private information connected to that name and address, it is analogous to People v. Chapman, 36 Cal.3d 98, 201 Cal.Rptr. 628, 679 P.2d 62 (1984), and State v. Butterworth, 48 Wash.App. 152, 737 P.2d 1297 (1987), two cases that recognized a right to privacy in the connection between a name and address and an unlisted telephone number. In Chapman, the police procured an unpublished telephone number allegedly used for illegal betting, gave it to the telephone company and obtained, without a warrant, the subscriber’s name and address. In Butterworth, the police gave the telephone company the name of a woman suspected of selling marijuana and, without a warrant, obtained the suspect’s address and unlisted telephone number. Significantly,
[bjoth [Butterworth and Chapman] ... involved situations in which the customer’s [name and] address was associated with an unlisted telephone number ... [that] was the. core information found to he protected by the right to privacy, and the customer's [name and] address was deemed protected as a consequence of its relationship to the protected information. Neither case purports to hold that a person’s [name and] address is in and of itself private information whose disclosure is constitutionally protected. . ..
State v. Chryst, 793 P.2d 538, 543 (Alaska Ct.App. 1990) (Bryner, C.J., concurring).
Here, we are faced with a situation very similar to that in Chapman and Butterworth. While Duncan may not have a privacy interest in his name and address per se, he does have a protected privacy interest in the account information associated with his name and address. See DeJohn, 403 A.2d at 1291. That account information "was the core information .. protected by the right to privacy,” just as the unlisted telephone numbers were in Chapman and Butterworth. Chryst, 793 P.2d at 543 (Bryner, C.J., concurring). Thus, Duncan’s name and address must likewise be protected "as a consequence of its relationship to the protected information.” Id.

. In support of its conclusion that Duncan did not establish that he had a subjective expectation of privacy, the majority finds persuasive that Duncan attempted to use his ATM card in a public store, when both his name and account number appear on the face of the card. However, there is no evidence that Duncan actually relinquished his card to the cashier or otherwise gave the cashier an opportunity to view or record the name on the card. Under these circumstances, I do not agree with the suggestion that Duncan somehow voluntarily forfeited his reasonable and subjective expectation of privacy in his account information.