The Cairone Law Firm PLLC

In United States v. Microsoft, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals held that § 2703 of the Stored Communications Act  (the "SCA") does not authorize courts to issue and enforce against U.S.‐based service providers warrants for the seizure of customer e‐mail content that is stored exclusively on foreign servers. The Second Circuit Court concluded that: a) Congress did not intend the SCA’s warrant provisions to apply extraterritorially; b) the focus of those provisions is protection of a user’s privacy interests; and c) the SCA does not authorize a U.S. court to issue and enforce an SCA warrant against a United States‐based service provider for the contents of a customer’s electronic communications stored on servers located outside the United States. As a result, the Court held that the SCA warrant in the case could not lawfully be used to compel Microsoft to produce to the government the contents of a customer’s e‐mail account stored exclusively in Ireland.  The US Sup...

In USA v . Carpenter, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals held that that the government’s collection of business records containing cell-site data was not a search under the Fourth Amendment. In the case,  Timothy Carpenter and Timothy Sanders were convicted of nine armed robberies in violation of the Hobbs Act. The government’s evidence at trial included business records from the defendants’ wireless carriers, showing that each man used his cellphone within a half-mile to two miles of several robberies during the times the robberies occurred. The defendants argued that the government’s collection of those records constituted a warrantless search in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The Sixth Circuit rejected the Fourth Amendment argument. Two key distinctions the Sixth Circuit relied on in reaching its decision were: a)  the difference between the content of a communication and the information necessary to convey it; and, b) the difference between precise GPS tracking and t...

On July 7, 2017, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals held that private citizens have a First Amendment right to record police officers in public. Fields v. City of Philadelphia, 862 F.3d 353 (3d. Cir. 2017). The case arose out of two separate incidents: Amanda Geraci recorded an arrest of a protestor attending an anti-fracking protest at the Philadelphia Convention Center. She did so without interfering with the police action. A police officer pushed Geraci and pinned her against a pillar for one to three minutes, which prevented her from observing or recording the arrest. Richard Fields used his iPhone to take a photograph of the scene of police breaking up a house party across the street from his location. A police officer ordered Fields to leave. When he refused, the officer arrested him, confiscated his phone, and detained him. The police officer searched the phone, opening videos and photos. The officer then released Fields, issuing him a citation. The charges were withdrawn ...