United States v. Caira

• Decision Date: 17 August 2016
• Docket Number: No. 14–1003,14–1003
• Citation: 833 F.3d 803
• Parties: United States of America, Plaintiff–Appellee, v. Frank Caira, Defendant–Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

833 F.3d 803

United States of America, Plaintiff–Appellee,

v.Frank Caira, Defendant–Appellant.

No. 14–1003

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued February 11, 2016

Decided August 17, 2016

Stephen Chahn Lee, Office of the United States Attorney, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiff–Appellee.

Hannah Valdez Garst, Law Offices of Hannah Garst, Hoffman Estates, IL, for Defendant–Appellant.

Before Ripple, Kanne, and Williams, Circuit Judges.

Williams, Circuit Judge.

Someone used the email address gslabs@hotmail.com to contact a Vietnamese website in an attempt to buy sassafras oil—a chemical that can be used to make the illegal drug known as ecstasy. The website was being monitored by the Drug Enforcement Administration, which began an investigation that culminated in Frank Caira being convicted on drug charges. A key step in the investigation was learning that Caira was the person behind the gslabs @hotmail.com address. The DEA made that discovery by issuing administrative subpoenas to technology companies, without getting a warrant. Arguing that the DEA conducted an “unreasonable search” in violation of the Fourth Amendment, Caira moved to suppress much of the evidence against him. The district court denied his motion and we affirm. Because Caira voluntarily shared the relevant information with technology companies, he did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the information, so his Fourth Amendment rights were not violated.

In sentencing Caira, the district judge erred by imposing conditions of supervised release without justifying them on the record. But Caira is serving a life sentence for another conviction. He is not expected to be released from prison so the conditions are not expected to be imposed. If he is released, a court can modify the conditions at that point. So the judge's error was harmless and we affirm Caira's sentence as well.

I. BACKGROUND

Between July and September 2008, emails were sent from gslabs@hotmail.com to an email address associated with a website hosted in Vietnam. The emails asked about buying sassafras oil, an ingredient in ecstasy. The DEA, which had been monitoring the website, sent an administrative subpoena to Microsoft Corporation (the owner of Hotmail, the web-based email service for @hotmail.com email addresses). The subpoena asked for:

[A]ll basic subscriber information, including the subscriber's name, address, length of service (including start date) and types of services used including any temporarily assigned network address, Passport.net accounts, means and source of payment (including credit card or bank account number), and the account login histories (IP Login history) of, the following email account(s): gslabs@hotmail.com.

For this case, the request for “account login histories (IP Login history)” is key. Internet Protocol (abbreviated as “I.P.”) addresses are used to identify computers connected to the internet. The allocation of addresses is centrally managed so one can look up in a public registry which internet service provider “owns” a particular address.

Responding to the subpoena, Microsoft gave the DEA information about instances in which the gslabs@hotmail.com account was accessed between July 5 and September 15, 2008. For each instance, Microsoft provided the date, time, and an I.P. address associated with the computer that accessed the account. The DEA saw that 24.15.180.222 was an I.P. address frequently used to access the account, so it sent an administrative subpoena to Comcast Corporation (the owner of that I.P. address). The subpoena asked for:

Any and all e-mail addresses associated with [24.15.180.222]; a) customer name and other user name(s); b) addresses; c) records of session times and durations; d) length of service (including start date) and types of service used; e) telephone or instrument number or other subscriber number or identity, including any temporarily assigned network address; and f) means and source of payment for such service (including any credit card or bank account numbers).

Comcast responded that the address was assigned to Anna Caira, and Comcast gave the DEA Anna's home address. The investigation continued from there and culminated in Anna's husband, Frank Caira, being charged with possessing and conspiring to manufacture illegal drugs, in violation of 21 U.S.C. sections 841(a)(1) and 846.

Caira moved to suppress evidence obtained through the subpoenas, arguing that the government's inquiry was a “search” under the Fourth Amendment, and that a warrant was required. The district court denied that motion and Caira pleaded guilty while reserving his right to appeal the denial of his suppression motion. This is that appeal. Caira also appeals his sentence because the district judge imposed conditions of supervised release without justifying the conditions on the record.

II. ANALYSIS

A. Caira Did Not Have a Reasonable Expectation of Privacy in His I.P. Addresses

The Fourth Amendment provides that “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.” U.S. Const. amend. IV. Caira contends that the DEA's actions amounted to an unreasonable search. The district court disagreed. We review the court's legal conclusions de novo, as well as its treatment of mixed questions of law and fact; we review its factual findings for clear error. United States v. Henderson , 748 F.3d 788, 790 (7th Cir. 2014).

Under the Fourth Amendment, a “search” occurs when “the government violates a subjective expectation of privacy that society recognizes as reasonable.” Kyllo v. United States , 533 U.S. 27, 33, 121 S.Ct. 2038, 150 L.Ed.2d 94 (2001) ; see Katz v. United States , 389 U.S. 347, 361, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967) (Harlan, J., concurring). Caira argues that I.P. addresses reveal information about a computer user's physical location, and people have both a subjective and objectively reasonable expectation of privacy in their physical location. But in United States v. Miller , 425 U.S. 435, 96 S.Ct. 1619, 48 L.Ed.2d 71 (1976), and Smith v. Maryland , 442 U.S. 735, 99 S.Ct. 2577, 61 L.Ed.2d 220 (1979), the Supreme Court developed a bright-line application of the reasonable-expectation-of-privacy test that is relevant here. In what has come to be known as the “third-party doctrine,” the Court held that “a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties ... even if the information is revealed on the assumption that it will be used only for a limited purpose and the confidence placed in the third party will not be betrayed.” Smith , 442 U.S. at 743–44, 99 S.Ct. 2577 (citing Miller , 425 U.S. at 442–44, 96 S.Ct. 1619 ).

In Miller, the defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in his banking records, even though they contained sensitive financial information, because he had voluntarily shared the information with a third party—the bank. 425 U.S. at 442–44, 96 S.Ct. 1619. And in Smith, the defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the phone numbers he dialed from his home phone because, as a necessary step in placing phone calls, he shared that information with the phone company. 442 U.S. at 743–44, 99 S.Ct. 2577. Even if such defendants had a subjective expectation of privacy, Miller and Smith held that once information is voluntarily disclosed to a third party, any such expectation is “not one that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable.” Smith , 442 U.S. at 743, 99 S.Ct. 2577 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Accordingly, the government's pursuit of the information “was not a ‘search,’ and no warrant was required.” Smith , 442 U.S. at 746, 99 S.Ct. 2577.

Caira complains about the DEA's inquiry into the I.P. addresses that were used to access gslabs@hotmail.com. In United States v. Weast, the Fifth Circuit wrote that I.P. addresses are broadcast “far and wide in the course of normal internet use.” 811 F.3d 743, 747 (5th Cir. 2016). Caira has not argued that such a description is inaccurate; indeed, his lawyer appeared to concede as much at oral argument. In any event Miller and Smith control if Caira shared his I.P. address with even one third party. See, e.g. , United States v. Christie , 624 F.3d 558, 573–74 (3rd Cir. 2010) (because defendant shared his I.P. address with the websites he visited, the government did not need a warrant to obtain that address through the administrator of one of those websites); United States v. Beckett , 369 Fed.Appx. 52, 56 (11th Cir. 2010)(nonprecedential) (defendant did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in his I.P. address because that information is “transmitted during internet usage” and is “necessary for the [internet service providers] ... to perform their services”); United States v. Perrine , 518 F.3d 1196, 1204–05 (10th Cir. 2008) (defendant had no “Fourth Amendment privacy expectation” in his I.P. address, which he had shared with Yahoo! by using an online chat service); United States v. Forrester , 512 F.3d 500, 510 (9th Cir. 2008) (defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the I.P. addresses of websites he visited, because he voluntarily shared that information with his internet service provider, as was necessary to view the websites).

Here, Caira shared his I.P. address with a third party—Microsoft. When he used his home computer and sent his username and password to Microsoft, he expected to see his Hotmail inbox displayed on his home computer screen. It would have done him no good if his inbox was instead displayed on the screen attached to his computer at work, or a computer at the public library, or the computer he used years earlier when first signing up for a Hotmail account. So every time he logged in, he sent Microsoft his I.P. address, specifically so that Microsoft could send back information to be displayed where Caira was physically present. So this case is...