District Court Rolls Back Magistrate's Decision, Says Compelled Fingerprint Product Isn't A Fifth Amendment Issue

from the SHOW-US-YOUR-HANDS! dept

So much for the Fifth Amendment. At least in Idaho, anyway. Back in January, a magistrate judge rejected the government's attempt to force a suspect to unlock a seized phone using his fingerprints. The judge found the government's request to be a violation of two rights -- the Fifth Amendment protection against compelling a defendant to testify against themselves -- and the Fourth Amendment, since the government hadn't shown a connection between the accused and the seized device.

As the magistrate pointed out, the government could not rely on "foregone conclusion" arguments because it had failed to develop any foregone conclusions. The warrant itself said the government was seeking to search the phone for "indicia of ownership" -- something the government should have been able to plausibly allege long before it started asking the court to compel the suspect to unlock the device.

The judge said the government's application lacked a lot of info it needed to pursue this next step.

The applicant avers that, when questioned at the residence at the time the earlier search warrant was executed, the individual told law enforcement his/her phone was in the bathroom. A phone was found in a bathroom, and the application implies that the individual was not in the bathroom when that statement was made. But three other phones were also located during the search. There is no specific information about how many bathrooms were in the residence. There is no information about whether the individual lives alone or whether anyone else lives or was in the residence at the time of the search. To be clear, none of these facts are determinative of the Court’s conclusion in this case. But they do illustrate that any connection between the individual and the phone at issue here is more tenuous than it might be under other circumstances.

Given the government's inability to tie the suspect to the seized phone, it's absolutely astonishing the district court has decided to reverse the magistrate's decision. (h/t Orin Kerr)

The court's reversal comes to exactly the opposite conclusion using exactly the same information the government presented to the magistrate judge. The government's inability to conclusively tie the phone recovered from the bathroom to the suspect is now, somehow, more than enough info to justify the compelled production of fingerprints. From the decision [PDF]:

The Government further represented in its application for the additional warrant that it already knew this particular cellphone belonged to the individual who was subject to the warrant because the individual stated—when questioned at his residence by police officers executing the warrant—that his phone was in the bathroom where he had been just prior to answering the door. The Google Pixel 3 XL cellphone was subsequently found in that bathroom.

A phone found in a bathroom is now the phone in the bathroom, making all those Fourth and Fifth Amendment concerns vanish into the ether.

But what's now in the ether may not matter -- at least for this phone. The precedent will be helpful but it's too late to do much about the seized phone, as the court points out.

The ability to unlock a cellphone with a fingerprint (biometric encryption) expires after 48 hours of not unlocking it. At that point, a passcode of some type must be used. Here, it took the Magistrate Judge a few days to issue the order denying the warrant1 and then took the Government eight days to file its motion for review. Consequently, any decision by the court in this case will have no impact on this case. The Government simply can no longer unlock the cellphone with a fingerprint. The issue is, therefore, moot under County of Los Angeles v. Davis, 440 U.S. 625, 631 (1979).

The government doesn't want the issue mooted. It wants some precedent, or at least a ruling it can use to persuade magistrates to approve potential Constitutional violations. The government argues contrasting rulings from magistrate judges on compelled product requests creates a "split" the district court must resolve.

The court declines to act on any perceived split here, presumably to the government's chagrin.

[T]he Government has not cited to a single written decision—and none exists to the Court’s knowledge—where a magistrate judge, or any judge from this District, has held that biometric data relating to a cellphone can be obtained by a warrant despite either Fourth Amendment or Fifth Amendment concerns. The mere fact that a magistrate judge has signed search warrants that permitted law enforcement to use a person’s biometrics to unlock electronic devices does not mean that the magistrate judge has had the opportunity to carefully and meaningfully decide the issue raised in this case. After all, the very ex parte nature of applications for search warrants does not lend itself to issues being raised as part of the process. It is not clear to this Court that there is a reasoned split of opinion between the magistrate judges in this District. This Court does not rely on the “split of authority” exception to address this issue.

That's the good news. The government does not have a blank check to compel fingerprint production. In this case, however, the court says the government isn't compelling the production of anything testimonial. But this is only due to the method the government says it will deploy.

Where, as here, the Government agents will pick the fingers to be pressed on the Touch ID sensor, there is no need to engage the thought process of the subject at all in effectuating the seizure. The application of the fingerprint to the sensor is simply the seizure of a physical characteristic, and the fingerprint by itself does not communicate anything. It is less intrusive than a forced blood draw. Both can be done while the individual sleeps or is unconscious. Accordingly, the Court determines—in accordance with a majority of Courts that have weighed in on this issue—that the requested warrant would not violate the Fifth Amendment because it does not require the suspect to provide any testimonial evidence.

Even if the government does nothing more than pick a random finger and apply it, it's using the suspect's body in an attempt to determine something it should have known before seeking compelled production. In this case, it's an undetermined number of "fingers," which suggests the government can keep trying until the device is unlocked or it runs out of fingers.

The government is still searching for "indicia of ownership" and is hoping placing the suspect's fingers on the seized phone will provide it with information the suspect knows, but the government doesn't. Whether or not the government can do this under the Fifth Amendment comes down to its "foregone conclusions," but the government doesn't appear to have one of those to work with.

The district court has turned the government's attempt to find out who owns the seized phone into a foregone conclusion by overriding the magistrate's determination on this issue. This won't set precedent in Idaho but it does indicate the district level will give the government the benefit of the doubt in cases like these, which lowers the bar for acceptable violations of Constitutional rights.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, 5th amendment, fingerprints, magistrate judge

Idaho Magistrate Judge Shoots Down Another Government Request For Compelled Fingerprint Production

from the on-the-Fifth,-I've-told-you-twice dept

Another small victory for Constitutional rights comes via the same federal magistrate who previously rejected another law enforcement request to compel production of fingerprints to unlock a phone.

In May, federal magistrate judge Ronald E. Bush said compelled production of fingerprints violates both the Fourth and Fifth Amendment. He declared the fingerprint application itself to be a search, one performed with the assistance of the suspect. There's the Fourth Amendment issue.

And since the government hadn't provided evidence tying the suspect to the phone, producing fingerprints would provide the government with testimonial evidence it didn't have. The government wanted to search the phone for "indica of ownership" -- something it hoped to perform after it had already compelled production of fingerprints. The government had no "foregone conclusion" to work with, so forcing a suspect to give up information only they know (namely, possibly verifying ownership by unlocking the phone) implicated his Fifth Amendment protections against being forced to testify against himself.

In this case, Judge Bush has handed down another denial [PDF]. Once again, the government wants to compel the unlocking of a device but doesn't have everything it needs. What the government does have isn't much. The evidence tying the suspect to child porn possession is mostly ephemeral: IP addresses, email addresses, and online accounts. Using this as probable cause, the government is asking to search electronics seized from a searched residence. (The government also wants to search the suspect's car, presumably in case any electronics are stashed there.)

As the court points out, the government wants to do things to a phone it hasn't shown will actually need to have this stuff done to it. It's working off an assumption and that assumption isn't enough for the judge to agree to the government's proposed rights violations.

The affidavit describes a feature of the smartphone which, according to the investigator, offers users “the ability to unlock the device via the use of a fingerprint or thumbprint.” It also describes that, in the investigator’s “training and experience, cellular telephone users often enable” such a touch identification security feature “because it is considered to be a more convenient way to unlock the device than by entering a numeric or alphanumeric passcode or password, as well as a more secure way to protect the device’s contents. This is particularly true when the user(s) of the device are engaged in criminal activities and thus have a heightened concern about securing the contents of the device.”

The affiant also states that “[t]he passcode or password that would unlock the cellular telephone device found during the search of [the individual, the vehicle, or the residence] is not known to law enforcement. Thus, it will likely be necessary for law enforcement to press [the individual’s] fingers and thumbs to the [smartphone] found during the search . . . in an attempt to unlock the device for the purpose of executing the search authorized by this warrant.” However, the affidavit does not describe a particular reason to believe that the subject cellphone has enabled a touch identification feature or would have such feature enabled if the device were seized during execution of a search warrant.

The attached footnote provides further reasons why the magistrate is rejecting this application for application of fingerprints.

Regardless of the constitutional issues, the application may also be premature and not ripe for decision. The applicant presupposes that a search will uncover and result in seizure of a specific smartphone at the time of the search but does not identify the device beyond a make and model and does not account for the possibility that a search might uncover additional or different devices.

The court reminds the government that it can no longer take phone searches as lightly as it once did. The Supreme Court's Riley decision made it clear phones are not pants pockets or suitcases or file cabinets. In many cases, they can provide access to a large portion of a person's life. When the government wants access to this wealth of information, it needs to deal with sureties and particulars, not assumptions devices will hold evidence and suspects will provide the keys for entrance. Here, the government does not have enough to demand the production of these keys.

Further, the government cannot demand someone testify against himself. While other courts are still wrestling with this question, Judge Bush's stance on this issue is crystal clear:

[S]ome actions are not within the Fifth Amendment privilege. Furnishing a blood sample, for instance, or providing a handwriting or voice exemplar, standing in a lineup, or submitting to fingerprinting for identification purposes are not testimonial communications because such actions do not require the suspect “to disclose any knowledge he might have” or to “speak his guilt.” Doe, 487 U.S. at 210–211 (citations omitted). The relevant distinction is the “extortion of information from the accused, . . . the attempt to force him to disclose the contents of his own mind.” Id. at 211 (citations omitted).

There is exactly that “extortion” of information here, however. The Government seeks to use the force of a search warrant to compel an individual to literally “open” the “privacies of [his/her] life,” Riley v. California, 573 U.S. at 403, and, by doing so, “to conced[e] the existence, possession and control, and authenticity of the documents tend[ing] to incriminate him.” In re Grand Jury Subpoena Duces Tecum Dated Mar. 25, 2011, 670 F.3d at 1343. The act of being forced to use one’s fingerprint to successfully open the contents of a smartphone is the equivalent of forcing a tangible oral or written statement from that individual that he or she has at least some degree of possession and control of the phone and possession, control and knowledge of its contents.

Once again, the court finds compelled fingerprint production to unlock devices "testimonial." And if it's testimonial, it's blocked by the Fifth Amendment. The government will just have to find another way to get at the evidence it thinks might reside in the phones it thinks it might find whenever it actually manages to get a warrant signed by this judge. Until then, it seriously needs to rethink its approach to this problem because the usual stuff isn't going to work in this court.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, 5th amendment, compelled production, encryption, fingerprints, idaho, magistrate judge, phones, ronald bush, unlock

US Magistrate Judge Provides The Template To End Copyright Trolling With Ruling Against Strike 3

from the you're-out dept

While we've been busily pointing out that the practice of copyright trolling is a plague across the globe, it seems there is something of a backlash beginning to build. For far too long, copyright trolls have bent the court system to their business model, with discovery requests and subpoenas allowing them to unmask internet service account holders on the basis of IP addresses, and then using that information to send settlement/threat letters to avoid trials altogether. Put simply, that is the business model of the copyright troll. The backlash against it has been multi-pronged. Canada has begun restricting what types of threat letters trolls can force ISPs to send to their customers, for instance. Elsewhere, Swedish ISPs have have led something of a legislative crusade against copyright trolls. In the US, some courts are finally realizing how bad IP addresses are as evidence, pushing trolls to get something better.

But the key to ending the plague of copyright trolling has probably been best outlined in a recent decision by a US Magistrate Judge against Strike 3 Holdings, in which the judge argues using Strike 3's own statistical analysis that it is abusing the court system to the detriment of innocent people.

Judge Orenstein denied motions for expedited discovery in thirteen cases. This means that the adult video company can’t get a subpoena to identify the alleged pirates. While we have incidentally seen similar decisions, the motivation, in this case, is worth highlighting.  

In his order, the Judge writes that allowing Strike 3 to obtain the identities of the account holders creates a risk.

Specifically, it will put Strike 3 “in a position to effectively coerce the identified subscribers into paying thousands of dollars to settle claims that may or may not have merit, so as to avoid either the cost of litigation or the embarrassment of being sued for using unlawful means to view adult material.”

In other words, the Judge is noting that Strike 3's copyright troll business model is, by nature, one that should disallow it from the kind of unmasking of account holders it so desperately needs to do to make any of this work. Essentially, granting these motions in favor of Strike 3 would have the court endorsing, if not actively participating in, the systematic extraction of money from people based on fear and embarrassment. Whatever that is, it sure ain't justice.

The court doesn't stop there, however. The order continues by noting that granting the discovery of account information would almost certainly not result in Strike 3 actually bringing any cases to trial. Trial proceedings are supposed to be the point of such subpoenas, but Strike 3's own statistics prove it's not after trials at all.

Since 2017, Strike 3 has filed 276 cases in the district, but zero have gone to trial.

Of the 143 cases that were resolved in the district, 49 resulted in a settlement and 94 were voluntarily dismissed. The latter number includes 50 cases where Strike 3 wasn’t confident that the defendant is the infringer. In other words, people who are likely wrongfully accused. This means that in one-third of the resolved cases, Strike 3 has likely targeted the wrong person. This number is “alarmingly high,” according to the Magistrate Judge.

“Strike 3 acknowledges that in many cases, the ‘Doe’ it has sued – that is, the subscriber – will prove to be someone other than the person who engaged in the allegedly unlawful conduct the Complaint describes,” the order reads. “And as it has now revealed in response to my inquiry, the proportion of such unprovable cases is alarmingly high,” Judge Orenstein adds.

None of this is surprising to readers here, of course. This is how Strike 3 operates. The entire business model relies on a scattershot approach to threat letters, in which some percentage will comply and pay out of pure fear. The problem is and has always been that too many courts don't actually consider this fact when granting subpoenas to unmask account holders. Here, the court manages to put that thought into its decision.

And, as a result of these "alarming" statistics, the judge has denied the motion to unmask the account holders in these cases. It's not exaggerating to say that if all, or even most, courts took the same route as this one, copyright trolling as a business model would completely fall apart.

And that would be a very good thing.

Filed Under: copyright, copyright trolling, magistrate judge, trolling
Companies: strike 3

Another Federal Magistrate Says Compelled Production Of Passwords/Biometrics Violates The Fifth Amendment

from the with-bonus-Fourth-Amendment-coverage! dept

In another judicial rarity, a magistrate judge has rejected a warrant request by the federal government to compel a criminal suspect to unlock a phone found during the search of his residence. It won't set precedent but it does present some arguments suspects will find useful when faced with orders for compelled production of passcodes or passwords.

Earlier this year, a California magistrate came to the same conclusion, finding that compelled production of fingerprints or faces to unlock phones violated the Fifth Amendment rights of the suspects targeted by the warrant. Equating biometric security features with passwords, the judge denied the warrant request, stating that if it's a Fifth Amendment violation to compel password production, it's a Fifth Amendment violation to force someone to apply their fingerprints to a locked device.

The device in this case is apparently secured by a swipe pattern. This would require more input from the suspect than simply applying a finger to the device. The court finds [PDF] that this act would be testimonial -- covered by Fifth Amendment protections against self-implication. But it goes further, finding that attempting to violate Fifth Amendment rights causes violations of Fourth Amendment rights.

The Court denies the Government’s application for a warrant authorizing law enforcement to compel an individual to use his/her fingerprints to unlock a certain cellphone. Using the individual’s fingerprints for this purpose would constitute a search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment. For a search and seizure to be lawful under the Fourth Amendment it must be “reasonable.” A search or seizure is unlawful, and therefore unreasonable, when it violates a person’s constitutional rights. Here, compelling the use of the individual’s fingerprints violates the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination because the compelled unlocking of the phone with fingerprints would communicate ownership or control over the phone. Because the compelled use of the individual’s fingerprints violates the Fifth Amendment, the search and seizure would not be reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. Thus, the Fourth Amendment and the Fifth Amendment prohibit the result sought by the Government.

The locked phone was taken during a search of the residence for suspected child porn possession. The problem with the government's warrant request is that the compelled production seeks testimonial information that can be gleaned simply by observing the suspect unlocking the device. As the court points out, this isn't acceptable, even if it's little more than a fingerprint being applied to phone's lockscreen. It's what the government doesn't know that hurts its case.

Here, however, the Government seeks to compel the individual to use his/her fingerprint to attempt the unlocking of a cellphone seized at the residence. Indeed, the Government acknowledges that one purpose for doing so is to “search for . . . indicia of ownership.” Aff. in Supp. of App. for Search Warrant 14. Thus, the Government seeks evidence that the individual’s fingerprint unlocks the phone not simply to access its contents but also to establish the individual’s possession and control of the phone and knowledge of its contents.

The government can't rely on the "foregone conclusion" theory since it apparently lacks enough evidence to tie the suspect to the phone found in the bathroom. Without more, the government is relying on the suspect to, in effect, testify against himself by unlocking a device the government can't conclusively say belongs to him.

A footnote details the yawning gap between the actual evidence the government has and the "foregone conclusion" it was hoping to have applied to its warrant request.

The applicant avers that, when questioned at the residence at the time the earlier search warrant was executed, the individual told law enforcement his/her phone was in the bathroom. A phone was found in a bathroom, and the application implies that the individual was not in the bathroom when that statement was made. But three other phones were also located during the search. There is no specific information about how many bathrooms were in the residence. There is no information about whether the individual lives alone or whether anyone else lives or was in the residence at the time of the search. To be clear, none of these facts are determinative of the Court’s conclusion in this case. But they do illustrate that any connection between the individual and the phone at issue here is more tenuous than it might be under other circumstances.

Another footnote suggests that if the government had performed a little bit of due diligence prior to requesting this warrant, things might have gone another way.

There are, of course, other investigative techniques to determine who owned or possessed the phone, such as seeking to lift fingerprints from the device or interviewing witnesses who might connect a specific individual to the phone. Further, the Government has investigatory methods available to it to seek stored communications and subscriber information regarding phones known to be used by a particular person, upon a proper showing.

Finally, the court lays it all out for the government. Compulsion is the opposite of consent. If the government would like to ask the suspect to unlock the phone, it's free to try that angle or anything listed in the footnote above. But what it can't do -- not without violating rights -- is ask the court for permission to force someone to incriminate themselves by inextricably linking a suspect device to themselves.

The reach of this decision goes no further than the rejected warrant. But it does at least show some judges are paying close attention to warrant requests seeking compelled production of passwords or biometric markers. That's good news for Americans and their rights.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, 5th amendment, biometrics, locked phones, magistrate judge, passwords

Magistrate Judge Shoots Down Government's Attempt To Gag Yahoo Indefinitely Over Grand Jury Subpoenas

from the checked-and-balanced dept

California judge Paul Grewal continues to hold up his end of the "Magistrates' Revolt." Grewal was the magistrate who shot down the government's open-ended request to grab every email in a person's Gmail account and sort through them at its leisure. He was actually the second magistrate to shoot down this request. The government went "judge shopping" after Judge John Facciola told it the scope of the request needed to be narrowed considerably before he would even think about granting it. The government decided it still wanted all the email and traveled across the country to see Judge Grewal… who told them to GTFO without even giving the feds the option to rewrite the request.

Grewal is once again siding with the public and acting as a check against government overreach.

Law enforcement cannot indefinitely forbid Yahoo Inc from revealing a grand jury subpoena that seeks subscriber account information, a U.S. judge ruled, because doing so would violate the company’s free speech rights.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal in San Jose, California on Thursday wrote that the government’s request would prohibit Yahoo from disclosing the subpoena, even years after the grand jury concluded its probe. The court order does not disclose the target of the federal investigation.

“In an era of increasing public demand for transparency about the extent of government demands for data from providers like Yahoo!, this cannot stand,” Grewal wrote.

Yahoo has had its fill of government secrecy. It spent a long time fighting both broad subscriber data requests from the NSA and their accompanying 25-year gag orders. Its ardent defense of its subscribers against broad government requests would still be under seal, but thanks to recently declassified documents, it has been able to address the subject publicly -- nearly 18 years before the gag order would have "aged off."

The DOJ again wants to maintain its subpoena secrecy, hoping to keep internet platforms like Yahoo, Twitter and Facebook from discussing grand jury subpoenas until… well, it's not entirely clear there's really an ending date.

Instead of asking that Yahoo be gagged for 60 or 90 days, the government asked that the company be gagged until further order of the court.

Grewal's rejection points out that the government feels entitled to indefinite gag orders, but has yet to offer any reasons why it should have its wishes granted.

The government did not demonstrate why such an indefinite request was necessary, Grewal wrote.

Judge Grewal has sent the government back to perform a rewrite -- either providing justification for its ridiculous demands, or to request something less illogical, like a finite gag order. The government has availed itself of many judicial rubber stamps over the years, but it looks like it's still running into resistance on both coasts: Paul Grewal in California and John Facciola in Washington D.C.

The ACLU has also been engaged in this fight against government secrecy since early last year, bringing more attention and legal expertise to an issue that hasn't achieved the terminal velocity of mainstream media attention. It's a bit more trench warfare, pitting magistrate judges and amicus briefs against the DOJ's assumption that it should have whatever it asks for, because terrorism, drugs, grand juries or whatever.

Filed Under: gag order, grand jury, indefinite gag order, john facciola, law enforcement, magistrate judge, magistrates revolt, paul grewal, subpoenas
Companies: yahoo

Microsoft Challenges Idea That US Government Can Go Fishing For Emails Stored Outside The US

from the going-to-be-an-important-fight dept

Back in April, we wrote about a magistrate judge ruling that Microsoft had to comply with a warrant asking for data that was held on servers in Dublin. Microsoft argued, quite reasonably, that a US warrant doesn't apply outside of the US. Unfortunately, magistrate judge James Francis disagreed, saying that while it's true that traditional warrants only apply inside the US, this is different because it's "digital." He argued that because the issue was about information, rather than physical property, it could be considered more like a subpoena than a warrant. As we noted, Microsoft made it clear that it would challenge this ruling, and now it has done so, arguing that the ruling flies in the face of the law and the Constitution. This summary from Microsoft's filing is pretty clear on what an incredibly big deal this is, with the government basically seeking to get the best of a subpoena and a warrant without any of the protections and limits required of either:

The Magistrate Judge issued a warrant under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act ("ECPA") that on its face, purports to authorize the Government to search any and all of Microsoft's facilities worldwide. Microsoft moved to vacate the warrant because the private email communications the Government seeks are located in a Microsoft facility in Dublin, Ireland and because Congress has not authorized the issuance of warrants that reach outside U.S. territory. The Government cannot seek and a court cannot issue a warrant allowing federal agents to break down the doors of Microsoft's Dublin facility. Likewise, the Government cannot conscript Microsoft to do what it has no authority itself to do -- i.e., execute a warranted search abroad. To end-run these points. the Government argues, and the Magistrate Judge held, that the warrant required by ECPA is not a "warrant" at all. They assert that Congress did not mean "warrant" when using that term, but instead meant some previously unheard of "hybrid" between a warrant and subpoena duces tecum. The Government takes the extraordinary position that by merely serving such a warrant on any U.S.-based email provider, it has the right to obtain the private emails of any subscriber, no matter where in the world the data may be located. and without the knowledge or consent of the subscriber or the relevant foreign government where the data is stored.

This interpretation not only blatantly rewrites the statute, it reads out of the Fourth Amendment the bedrock requirement that the Government must specify the place to be searched with particularity, effectively amending the Constitution for searches of communications held digitally. It would also authorize the Government (including state and local governments) to violate the territorial integrity of sovereign nations and circumvent the commitments made by the United States in mutual legal assistance treaties expressly designed to facilitate cross-border criminal investigations. If this is what Congress intended, it would have made its intent clear in the statute. But the language and the logic of the statute, as well as its legislative history, show that Congress used the word "warrant" in ECPA to mean "warrant," and not some super-powerful "hybrid subpoena." And Congress used the term "warrant" expecting that the Government would be bound by all the inherent limitations of warrants, including the limitation that warrants may not be issued to obtain evidence located in the territory of another sovereign nation.

The Government's interpretation ignores the profound and well established differences between a warrant and a subpoena. A warrant gives the Government the power to seize evidence without notice or affording an opportunity to challenge the seizure in advance. But it requires a specific description (supported by probable cause) of the thing to be seized and the place to be searched and that place must be in the United States. A subpoena duces tecum, on the other hand, does not authorize a search and seizure of the private communications of a third party. Rather. it gives the Government the power to require a person to collect items within her possession, custody, or control, regardless of location, and bring them to court at an appointed time. It also affords the recipient an opportunity to move in advance to quash. Here, the Government wants to exploit the power of a warrant and the sweeping geographic scope of a subpoena, without having to comply with fundamental protections provided by either. There is not a shred of support in the statute or its legislative history for the proposition that Congress intended to allow the Government to mix and match like this. In fact, Congress recognized the basic distinction between a warrant and a subpoena in ECPA when it authorized the Government to obtain certain types of data with a subpoena or a "court order," but required a warrant to obtain a person's most sensitive and constitutionally protected information -- the contents of emails less than 6 months old.

Verizon has stepped in as well, pointing out that if the original ruling is allowed to stand, it could have significant negative impact on the ability of US businesses to get non-US users to trust them -- an increasingly important issue in light of the Snowden revelations.

The magistrate’s ruling, if left standing, could cost U.S. businesses billions of dollars in lost revenue, undermine international agreements and understandings, and prompt foreign governments to retaliate by forcing foreign affiliates of American companies to turn over the content of customer data stored in the United States.

The recent revelations about U.S. intelligence practices have heightened foreign sensitivities about the U.S. government’s access to data abroad, generated distrust of U.S. companies by foreign officials and customers, and led to calls to cease doing business with U.S. communications and cloud service providers. Studies have estimated that this distrust will result in tens of billions of dollars in lost business over the next few years. The magistrate’s ruling, if left standing, will dramatically increase the harm to American businesses. It would mean that foreign customers’ communications and other stored data would be available to hundreds or thousands of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, regardless of the laws of the countries where the data is held. Foreign customers will respond by moving their business to foreign companies without a presence in the United States.

If you hadn't figured it out by now, this case is going to have tremendously important ramifications for privacy around the globe.

Filed Under: doj, ecpa, email, international, james francis, magistrate judge, privacy, sca, subpoena, warrants
Companies: microsoft