United States v. Austin

230 F. Supp. 3d 828, 2017 WL 496374, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 103101
CourtDistrict Court, M.D. Tennessee
DecidedFebruary 2, 2017
DocketNo. 3:16-cr-00068
StatusPublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 230 F. Supp. 3d 828 (United States v. Austin) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, M.D. Tennessee primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Austin, 230 F. Supp. 3d 828, 2017 WL 496374, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 103101 (M.D. Tenn. 2017).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

WAVERLY D. CRENSHAW, JR., United States District Judge

I. Introduction

Pending before the Court are the Defendant’s Motion To Suppress Evidence And Statements (Doc. Nos. 19, 42) and the Government’s Response (Doc. Nos. 27, 41) in opposition. The Court held a hearing on the Motion on January 19, 2017. For the reasons set forth herein, the Motion is DENIED.

II. Factual and Procedural Background

Through the pending Motion, the Defendant seeks to suppress all evidence and statements obtained in connection with a residential search warrant executed at his home on September 11, 2015 (Defendant’s Exhibit 1 (Doc. No. 19-1)). The Defendant contends that the residential search warrant was based on information gathered from an earlier, illegal search of his computer through deployment of a “Network Investigation Technique” (hereinafter “NIT”) (Defendant’s Exhibit 3 (Doc. No. 19-3)) authorized by a warrant issued by a magistrate judge in the Eastern District of Virginia. The NIT Warrant permitted agents to obtain the IP addresses and other information relating to the computers of administrators and users of a child pornography website named “Playpen.” (Doc. No. 19-1, at ¶¶ 7, 11, 24). The Defendant argues that the NIT Warrant was void because it was issued in violation of the territorial limitations set forth in 28 U.S.C. § 636 and Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41.

According to the affidavit supporting the NIT Warrant, executed by Special Agent Douglas McFarlane of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Playpen website operated on “The Onion Router” or “TOR” network, which protects users’ privacy online “by bouncing their communications around a distributed network of relay computers run by volunteers all around the world, thereby masking the user’s actual IP address which could otherwise be used to identify a user.” (Doc. No. 19-3, at ¶¶ 7, 8). The TOR network does not reside on the traditional Internet, and requires the user to take numerous affirmative steps to obtain access. (Id., at ¶ 10). During the period between September 16, 2014, and February 3, 2015, FBI Special Agents accessed the Playpen website, and a detailed description of their observations is included in the affidavit. (Id., at ¶¶ 11-27).

Pursuant to a search warrant executed in January 2015, agents seized a server that contained a copy of the Playpen website and placed the contents of the website on a computer server located at a government facility in Newington, VA, in the Eastern District of Virginia. (Id., at ¶ 28). After obtaining a second search warrant in February 2015 for the residence of the website’s administrator, agents assumed administrative control of the website in an effort to locate and identify the site’s users through the NIT process. (Id., at ¶ 30).

The affidavit describes the NIT process as follows:

33. In the normal course of operation, websites send content to visitors. A user’s computer downloads that content and uses it to display web pages on the user’s computer. Under the NIT authorized by this warrant, the TARGET WEBSITE, which will be located in [830]*830Newington, Virginia, in the Eastern District of Virginia, would augment that content with additional computer instructions. When a user’s computer successfully downloads those instructions from the TARGET WEBSITE, located in the Eastern District of Virginia, the instructions, which comprise the NIT, are designed to cause the user’s ‘activating’ computer to transmit certain information to a computer controlled by or known to the government. That information is described with particularity on the warrant (in Attachment B of this affidavit), and the warrant authorizes obtaining no other information. The NIT will not deny the user of the ‘activating’ computer access to any data or functionality of the user’s computer.
34. The NIT will reveal to the government environmental variables and certain registry-type information that may assist in identifying the user’s computer, its location, and the user of the computer, as to which there is probable cause to believe is evidence of violations of the statutes cited in paragraph 4...

(Id., at ¶¶ 33, 34).

Through deployment of the NIT, the agents identified the IP address of the Defendant’s computer as a user of the Playpen website; and along with additional investigation, agents identified his residence in Rockvale, Tennessee. (Doc. No. 19-1, at ¶¶ 26-40). During execution of the search warrant issued for that residence, agents seized devices containing images of child pornography, and the Defendant made statements to the agents. (Doc. No. 19, at 5; Doc. No. 27, at 3). Through the pending Motion, the Defendant seeks to suppress that evidence and his statements.

At the hearing on January 19, 2017, the Defendant called Jeffrey Cunningham, a digital forensics examiner with Cyber Agents, Inc., to testify as an expert in digital forensics. (Defendant’s Exhibit 5 (Jeffrey Cunningham’s Curriculum Vitae)). Mr. Cunningham explained that the TOR network, or onion router, was originally developed for Naval intelligence, and provides anonymity for users by wrapping layers of encryption around information as it passes over computers and servers on the TOR network. Through this encryption, a user of the TOR network receiving information on the network is unable to determine the source, or IP address, of the computer sending the information. Consequently, Mr. Cunningham testified, a user who accesses a site within the TOR network, like the Playpen site, is unable to see the IP address of other users. The IP address of an internet network user outside of TOR, by contrast, can be seen by other users.

Mr. Cunningham testified that the NIT at issue in this case, once it is activated on the target computer, secretly gathers information about the computer and sends it back to a government-operated computer outside the TOR network. The NIT is able to do this by using an “exploit,” which is a vulnerability in the software, and “piggybacking” on the vulnerability to attach to the target computer when the target computer connects to the Playpen site on the server in Virginia. Once attached, Mr. Cunningham testified, the NIT gathers particular information about the target computer, including the IP address, and sends it back to the government computer.1 According to Mr. Cunningham, the [831]*831process of information gathering by the NIT from the target computer, wherever located, and the return of that information to the government computer, can be instantaneous.

On cross examination, Mr. Cunningham testified that anonymity for users on the TOR network is not guaranteed. Mr. Cunningham also testified that, in order to access the Playpen website, a user would first be required to download and install a program allowing access to the TOR network, then the user would need to find, and connect to, the address for Playpen on that network. According to Mr. Cunningham, a user would not “stumble onto” the Playpen site.

III. Analysis

The Defendant argues that the NIT Warrant, upon which the residential search warrant was based, violated the territorial limitations of the Federal Magistrates Act, specifically 28 U.S.C.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

United States v. James Ganzer, Jr.
922 F.3d 579 (Fifth Circuit, 2019)
State of Tennessee v. Charlotte Lynn Frazier And Andrea Parks
558 S.W.3d 145 (Tennessee Supreme Court, 2018)
United States v. Workman
863 F.3d 1313 (Tenth Circuit, 2017)
United States v. Taylor
250 F. Supp. 3d 1215 (N.D. Alabama, 2017)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
230 F. Supp. 3d 828, 2017 WL 496374, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 103101, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-austin-tnmd-2017.