PA: Robber had no REP in proof of his wifi connection on property of another when committing the robbery

Defendant was accused of a 2 am robbery and assault in a dorm on the Moravian College campus in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Campus police checked the wifi connections and found three at 2 am that were not residents of the dorm. Two were female and one was male, defendant. He had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the wifi information he left behind that connected him to the scene of the robbery. Commonwealth v. Dunkins, 2020 Pa. Super. LEXIS 117 (Feb. 12, 2020):

In this case, Appellant fails to acknowledge the Carpenter decision did not invalidate “tower dump” requests by law enforcement to identify all of the devices that were connected to one particular cell site during a particular interval. This action by campus police in this case is akin to a “tower dump” request as campus security sought general network connection information from one of Moravian’s wireless access points near the location of the robbery at the time it occurred.

The campus police did not target a specific individual or attempt to track an individual’s movements but instead merely sought to compile a list of all the devices signed on to the WiFi in the Hassler dorm at the time of the robbery. Using the process of elimination, campus officials were able to determine that, at the time of the robbery, Appellant was the only male student logged on to campus WiFi at the Hassler dorm who did not reside in that location.

Appellant also does not appreciate the difference between the CSLI obtained in Carpenter and the WiFi data obtained in this case. Whereas CSLI tracks an individual’s movements at all times of the day regardless of where he travels, the WiFi data in this case is only collected when an individual logs onto the campus wireless network and is present on the Moravian campus.

We agree with the trial court’s observation that the Moravian WiFi network is confined to the college campus and offered as an available option to students and faculty. When college officials seek to determine which students are logged on to the network near a particular wireless access point at a particular time, the private wireless network functions similarly to a security camera that may exist at the college. As such, the decision in Carpenter does not invalidate the warrantless search in this case.

Moreover, Appellant cannot reasonably argue that he was subjected to an illegal warrantless search under the Fourth Amendment when he specifically consented to Moravian’s internet use policy, which clearly stated that individuals who choose to utilize the campus computer system and wireless network provide authorization for the college to collect and disclose all internet data composed, transmitted, or received through the campus computer system and its network connections.

Legal Intelligencer: Warrantless Search of Wi-Fi Network OK’d by Superior Court by Zack Needles (“Defense counsel said the ruling opens the door to allow for ‘geotracking’ through Wi-Fi.”)