3 ms·
The opinion is rather dense and I don't expect everyone will take the time to read it. In the interest of promoting discussion, here's what Ars Technica said:
by csandreasen 13y ago
The opinion is rather dense and I don't expect everyone will take the time to read it. In the interest of promoting discussion, here's what Ars Technica said:
"The government’s response (PDF), filed on September 30th, is a heavily redacted opposition arguing that when law enforcement can monitor one person’s information without a warrant, it can monitor everyone’s information, “regardless of the collection’s expanse.” Notably, the government is also arguing that no one other than the company that provided the information—including the defendant in this case—has the right to challenge this disclosure in court."
... and here's the paragraph of the opposition document that they are quoting:
"(U) Third, Moalin lacks standing to assert the interests of and service provider, or the interests of other persons whose telephony metadata may have been collected along with his own, regardless of the collection's scope. Fourth Amendment rights are "personal in nature, and cannot bestow vicarious protection on those who do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the place to be searched." Steagald v. United States, 451 U.S. 204, 219 (1981); accord Minnesota v. Carter, 525 U.S. 83, 88 (1998) (a person claiming Fourth Amendment protection "must demonstrate that he personally has an expectation of privacy in the place searched"). Accordingly, "a court may not exclude evidence under the Fourth Amendment unless it finds that an unlawful search or seizure violated the defendant's own constitutional rights." United States v. Payner, 447 U.S. 727, 731-32 (1980); see also In re Grand Jury Proceedings, 827 F.2d 301, 305 (8th Cir. 1987) (rejecting argument that a subpoena was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment because it "may make available to the grand jury [money transfer] records involving hundreds of innocent people"); United States v. Rigmaiden, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 65633, at 38 (D. Ariz. May 8, 2013) (United States did not violate defendant's Fourth Amendment rights by acquiring 1.8 million IP addresses from Verizon); Li, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS at 17 (because the court concluded that the defendant lacked any reasonable expectation of privacy in the evidence obtained from the third-party service provider, "the court also finds that defendant does not have standing to seek suppression of the evidence"). Therefore, neither Moalin nor his co-defendants have standing to challenge the United States' collection from the service provider, regardless of the collection's expanse. See In re Application of the Federal Bureau of Investigation for an Order Requiring the Production of Tangible Things, 2013 WL 5307991, at 5 (For. Intell. Surv. Ct. August 29, 2013), (hereinafter "FISC's August 29th Memorandum Opinion" or "In Re Application of FBI") ("Put another way, where one individual does not have a Fourth Amendment interest, grouping together a large number of similarly-situated individuals cannot result in a Fourth Amendment interest springing into existence ex nihilo.").