Smith v. Obama

24 F. Supp. 3d 1005, 2014 WL 2506421, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 76344
CourtDistrict Court, D. Idaho
DecidedJune 3, 2014
DocketCase No. 2:13-CV-257-BLW
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 24 F. Supp. 3d 1005 (Smith v. Obama) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Idaho primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Smith v. Obama, 24 F. Supp. 3d 1005, 2014 WL 2506421, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 76344 (D. Idaho 2014).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM DECISION

B. LYNN WINMILL, Chief Judge.

INTRODUCTION

The Court has before it plaintiff Smith’s motion for injunctive relief and defendants’ motion to dismiss. The Court heard oral argument on May 14, 2014, and took the motions under advisement. For the reasons expressed below, the Court will grant the defendants’ motion to dismiss and deny Smith’s motion for injunctive relief.

BACKGROUND

The Fourth Amendment protects the right of privacy by forbidding unreasonable searches and seizures. With few ex7 ceptions, a citizen cannot be searched in violation of her reasonable expectation of privacy unless a judge has found there is probable cause to believe that she is committing a crime. This Fourth Amendment protection is violated here, Smith alleges, because the National Security Administration (NSA) is searching her telephone records without showing first that there is probable cause to believe she is engaged in criminal behavior. She asks the Court to enjoin the NSA from collecting and analyzing her telephone data.

For more than seven years, the NSA has been collecting and analyzing the telephone records of Americans to detect terrorist threats. While the agency does not listen to conversations, or identify the callers’ names and addresses, it does collect the telephone numbers of all parties to a [1007]*1007call, along with the duration and time of that call, and stores this data for five years.

The NSA’s collection and analysis protocols must be periodically approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). The FISC prohibits the NSA from accessing the stored telephone data for any purpose other than counterterrorism or technical maintenance of the system. See Shea Declaration (DM. No. 15-2) at ¶ 31. '

The NSA uses its vast trove of data to identify the telephone numbers of calls that terrorists make and receive. Before the NSA can access its telephone data, the FISC-approved protocols require the agency to first make an internal finding— authorized by one of twenty-two designated NSA officials — -that a particular telephone number is associated with a terrorist organization. Id. at ¶ 32.

Once the NSA makes its internal determination, it may run a query through its data bank to collect (1) the telephone data of persons who made calls to — or received calls from — the suspected terrorist, and (2) the telephone data of persons who made calls to — or received calls from — the telephone numbers for any person who had direct telephone contact with the suspected terrorist. Id. at ¶ 23. In prior years, the scope of the query extended to a third level but “the NSA has taken immediate steps to implement restrictions [imposed by the President] limiting its review of queries to two [levels] only and the Government is now working with the FISC to incorporate this restriction into the FISC’s orders.” Id.

Smith alleges that her own telephone data has been swept up into the NSA’s broad net in violation of her Fourth Amendment rights.1 She asks the Court to enjoin the agency from collecting and using this telephone data from her calls.2

ANALYSIS

The Fourth Amendment is con- • cerned with surveillance that (1) involves a “trespassory intrusion on property” or (2) “violates a subjective expectation of privacy that society recognizes as reasonable.” See U.S. v. Jones, — U.S.-, 132 S.Ct. 945, 954-55, 181 L.Ed.2d 911 (2012) (Soto-mayor, J., concurring). It is the latter interest that Smith urges here. She claims that the NSA’s collection efforts violate her expectation of privacy in her telephone records.

Smith has no expectation of privacy in the telephone numbers that she dials. See Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 99 S.Ct. 2577, 61 L.Ed.2d 220 (1979). A person using the telephone “voluntarily convey[s] numerical information to the telephone company” and “assume[s] the risk that the company [will] reveal to police the numbers he dialed.” Id. at 744, 99 S.Ct. 2577.

But the data collected by the NSA goes beyond the telephone numbers that Smith dials, and reaches into her personal information. For example, the NSA’s collection of the time and duration of phone calls is revealing: Would most citizens want to [1008]*1008keep private the fact that they called someone at one in the morning and talked for an hour or two?

And what about location? Would most phone users expect to keep private (1) their location at any moment and (2) their travel path over time? The NSA collects “trunk identifier” data, see Shea Declaration, supra at ¶ 15, that shows the location where a cell-phone call enters the “trunk” system to be relayed eventually to the number being called. See Leslie Groll, What Kind of Phone Data Can the NSA Collect Exactly?, FOREIGN POLICY (June 6, 2013).3 While this would not pinpoint a phone user’s precise location, it would narrow it down considerably. M4; see also State v. Earls, 214 N.J. 564, 70 A.3d 630, 637 (2013) (holding that New Jersey’s constitution requires police to obtain warrant before collecting cell phone location data and noting that carriers have data that “can locate cell-phone users within buildings, and even within individual floors and rooms within buildings”). Moreover, the data also includes “comprehensive communications routing information.” See Shea Declaration, supra at ¶ 15. While this phrase is ambiguous, it may mean that for a single call, all the trunk identifiers are collected by the NSA, allowing the agency to track “how a cell phone user moves from one cell phone tower to another while traveling.” FOREIGN POLICY, supra. The speed with which the phone moves from tower to tower could indicate, for example, whether the device is being used in a car or while walking down the street.

Compare these intrusions to those faced in Smith: There, the Baltimore police collected the telephone numbers dialed by a suspected robber for about.two days. This simple comparison reveals a looming gulf between Smith and this case. But the Ninth Circuit has bridged some of that chasm. In United States v. Reed, 575 F.3d 900 (9th Cir.2009), the Circuit held that “there is no Fourth Amendment expectation of privacy” in data that includes the number dialed along with the length and time of the call. Id. at 914. The Circuit has also applied Smith in holding that email and internet users have no expectation of privacy in the “to/from addresses of e-mail messages, the IP addresses of websites visited and the total amount of data transmitted to or from an account.” U.S. v. Forrester, 512 F.3d 500, 510 (9th Cir.2008). To the extent that an individual’s telephone data collected by a céll-phone provider is no different than an individual’s power consumption records collected by an electric utility, the Circuit has held that utility customers lack a reasonable expectation of privacy in such business records. U.S. v. Golden Valley Elec. Ass’n,

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
24 F. Supp. 3d 1005, 2014 WL 2506421, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 76344, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/smith-v-obama-idd-2014.