In the district court’s original opinion, reversed for reconsideration in United States v. Ackerman, 831 F.3d 1292 (10th Cir. 2016), the district court assumed defendant had a reasonable expectation of privacy in his emails. On remand, the court determines that he did not. He was an AOL customer, and AOL’s TOS warn against use of AOL to transmit illegal material. And, “To prevent violations and enforce this TOS and remediate any violations, we can take any technical, legal, and other actions that we deem, in our sole discretion, necessary and appropriate without notice to you.” This amounted to defendant having no reasonable expectation of privacy in child pornography that AOL’s system scanned, separated, and tipped off NCMEC. AOL is, as an email provider, a mandated child pornography reporter. That made AOL’s report and NCMEC’s receipt in good faith reliance on a statutory scheme. United States v. Ackerman, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 178925 (D. Kan. Oct. 30, 2017):
In this case, AOL’s TOS similarly limits Defendant’s objectively reasonable expectation of privacy. As noted above, the TOS informed Defendant that he must comply with applicable laws and that he could not participate in illegal activities. AOL’s TOS also informed Defendant that if he participated in illegal activities or did not comply with AOL’s TOS, it could take technical, legal, or other actions without notice to him. Thus, the Court concludes that Defendant cannot establish a reasonably objective expectation of privacy in this particular email and its four attachments (containing child pornography) after AOL terminated his account for violating its TOS.
In sum, even though the Tenth Circuit found that NCMEC is a governmental actor and/or entity and exceeded AOL’s private search, this Court finds on remand that Defendant did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in his email or the four attached images at the time of NCMEC’s search. Because he did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy, NCMEC’s conduct did not cause a violation of the Fourth Amendment and suppression is not warranted.
. . .
Defendant contends that the good faith exception is inapplicable here. He argues that the statutory scheme in Krull is different from the statutory scheme in this case because the statutory scheme in Krull expressly authorized warrantless searches. Specifically, the statute in Krull allowed officials to “inspect” records “at any reasonable time during the night or day” and allowed “examination of the premises of … place of business.” [fn: Krull, 480 U.S. at 343.] In contrast, Defendant contends that the statute here does not authorize warrantless searches but instead simply allows NCMEC to possess contraband.
Defendant’s argument draws too fine of a line. Under 18 U.S.C. § 2258A(a)(1), an electronic service provider is required to provide a report of any apparent child pornography to NCMEC’s CyberTipline. This report may include information about the individual, historical reference, geographic location, and any images. NCMEC is then required to forward this report and information to law enforcement. In the Tenth Circuit’s Ackerman opinion, it noted these statutes and stated that NCMEC is “statutorily authorized to receive contraband (child pornography) knowingly and review its contents intentionally.” It also stated that these statutes were effectively “a statutory grant of special law enforcement authority to a single entity and no other, authorizing and encouraging it to perform functions no other private person or entity may lawfully undertake.” The Tenth Circuit, in determining that NCMEC acted as a governmental agent recognized and acknowledged the breadth of the authority given to NCMEC by statute. In addition, the Tenth Circuit noted that although the statutes do not require NCMEC to open and view the email attachments, “everyone accepts that Congress enabled NCMEC to review [Defendant’s] email by excepting the Center from the myriad laws banning the knowing receipt, possession, and viewing of child pornography. Nothing about NCMEC’s actions could possibly have come as a surprise.”
by John Wesley Hall
Criminal Defense Lawyer and
Search and seizure law consultant
Little Rock, Arkansas
Contact: forhall @ aol.com / The Book www.johnwesleyhall.com
"If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. It isn't, and they don't." —Me
"Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well." –Josh Billings (pseudonym of Henry Wheeler Shaw), Josh Billings on Ice, and Other Things (1868) (erroneously attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson, among others)
“I am still learning.” —Domenico Giuntalodi (but misattributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti (common phrase throughout 1500's)).
"Love work; hate mastery over others; and avoid intimacy with the government."
—Shemaya, in the Thalmud
"It is a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very pleasant world. There are bad people in it, Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers."
—Charles Dickens, “The Old Curiosity Shop ... With a Frontispiece. From a Painting by Geo. Cattermole, Etc.” 255 (1848)
"A system of law that not only makes certain conduct criminal, but also lays down rules for the conduct of the authorities, often becomes complex in its application to individual cases, and will from time to time produce imperfect results, especially if one's attention is confined to the particular case at bar. Some criminals do go free because of the necessity of keeping government and its servants in their place. That is one of the costs of having and enforcing a Bill of Rights. This country is built on the assumption that the cost is worth paying, and that in the long run we are all both freer and safer if the Constitution is strictly enforced."
—Williams
v. Nix, 700 F. 2d 1164, 1173 (8th Cir. 1983) (Richard Sheppard Arnold,
J.), rev'd Nix v. Williams, 467 US. 431 (1984).
"The criminal goes free, if he must, but it is the law that sets him free. Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws,
or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence." —Mapp
v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 659 (1961).
"Any costs the exclusionary rule are costs imposed directly by the Fourth Amendment."
—Yale Kamisar, 86 Mich.L.Rev. 1, 36 n. 151 (1987).
"There have been powerful hydraulic pressures throughout our history that
bear heavily on the Court to water down constitutional guarantees and give the
police the upper hand. That hydraulic pressure has probably never been greater
than it is today."
— Terry
v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 39 (1968) (Douglas, J., dissenting).
"The great end, for which men entered into society, was to secure their
property."
—Entick
v. Carrington, 19 How.St.Tr. 1029, 1066, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (C.P. 1765)
"It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have
frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people. And
so, while we are concerned here with a shabby defrauder, we must deal with his
case in the context of what are really the great themes expressed by the Fourth
Amendment."
—United
States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 69 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting)
"The course of true law pertaining to searches and seizures, as enunciated
here, has not–to put it mildly–run smooth."
—Chapman
v. United States, 365 U.S. 610, 618 (1961) (Frankfurter, J., concurring).
"A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the
bottom of a turntable."
—Arizona
v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 325 (1987)
"For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly
exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth
Amendment protection. ... But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in
an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected."
—Katz
v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967)
“Experience should teach us to be most on guard to
protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born
to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded
rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men
of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
—United
States v. Olmstead, 277 U.S. 438, 479 (1925) (Brandeis, J., dissenting)
“Liberty—the freedom from unwarranted
intrusion by government—is as easily lost through insistent nibbles by
government officials who seek to do their jobs too well as by those whose purpose
it is to oppress; the piranha can be as deadly as the shark.”
—United
States v. $124,570, 873 F.2d 1240, 1246 (9th Cir. 1989)
"You can't always get what you want /
But if you try sometimes / You just might find / You get what you need."
—Mick Jagger & Keith Richards
"In Germany, they first came for the communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for
the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came
for me–and by that time there was nobody left to speak up."
—Martin Niemöller (1945) [he served seven years in a concentration
camp]
“You know, most men would get discouraged by
now. Fortunately for you, I am not most men!”
---Pepé Le Pew
"The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers,
is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which
reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that
those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being
judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting
out crime."
—Johnson
v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 13-14 (1948)