CA7: No REP in IP address because it is broadcast

There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in the IP address one is using because it’s broadcast far and wide. It is a mere business record under the third party doctrine, and Jones doesn’t alter the third party doctrine. United States v. Caira, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 15098 (7th Cir. Aug. 17, 2016):

Here, Caira shared his I.P. address with a third party—Microsoft. When he used his home computer and sent his username and password to Microsoft, he expected to see his Hotmail inbox displayed on his home computer screen. It would have done him no good if his inbox was instead displayed on the screen attached to his computer at work, or a computer at the public library, or the computer he used years earlier when first signing up for a Hotmail account. So every time he logged in, he sent Microsoft his I.P. address, specifically so that Microsoft could send back information to be displayed where Caira was physically present. So this case is controlled by Miller and Smith. See Smith, 442 U.S. at 742 (“All telephone users realize that they must ‘convey’ phone numbers to the telephone company, since it is through telephone company switching equipment that their calls are completed.”); see also United States v. Graham, 824 F.3d 421, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 9797, at *21 (4th Cir. May 31, 2016) (en banc) (“[L]ike the defendant in Smith, 442 U.S. at 745, Defendants here did ‘assume the risk’ that the phone company would make a record of the information necessary to accomplish the very tasks they paid the phone company to perform. They cannot now protest that providing this essential information was involuntary.”).

This case parallels the Tenth Circuit’s case in United States v. Perrine, 518 F.3d 1196. Here, law enforcement observed a suspicious conversation on Microsoft’s email service. In Perrine , it was Yahoo!’s online chat service. Id. at 1199-1201. Here, the government sent a subpoena asking Microsoft for I.P. addresses associated with gslabs@hotmail.com. In Perrine, the subpoena asked Yahoo! for addresses associated with the username “stevedragonslayer.” Id. at 1199. In each case, officials studied the subpoena response, focused on a particular I.P. address, and sent a second subpoena, to the internet service provider that owned the address of interest (here, Comcast; in Perrine, Cox Communications). In each case, the response to that second subpoena led to the defendant’s residence, which led to criminal charges against the defendant. See Perrine, 518 F.3d at 1199-1200. The Perrine court held that Perrine had no “Fourth Amendment privacy expectation” in the “information he gave to Yahoo! and Cox.” Id. at 1204. A parallel conclusion here would require us to affirm the denial of Caira’s motion to suppress.

But Caira urges reversal, arguing that his case is special because the DEA discovered the I.P. address associated with his home—and the DEA knew that would happen, because people often check their email from home—and the home is given special protection under the Fourth Amendment, see Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 586, 100 S. Ct. 1371, 63 L. Ed. 2d 639 (1986); Kyllo, 533 U.S. at 40. That argument is foreclosed by Smith, in which government officials sought information that they knew was connected to the defendant’s home, and in which the Court explicitly rejected an argument identical to Caira’s:
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