PRIVACY AS PRIVILEGE: THE STORED COMMUNICATIONS ACT AND INTERNET EVIDENCE Rebecca Wexler CONTENTS INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 2723 I. THE INTERNET AND THE TELEGRAPH ....................................................................... 2730 A. The Puzzle ........................................................................................................................ 2731 B. The Stored Communications Act .................................................................................. 2735 C. Telegraph Privacy Statutes ............................................................................................. 2741 II. PRIVACY AS PRIVILEGE .................................................................................................... 2745 A. Statutory Privileges ........................................................................................................ 2745 1. Defining Statutory Privileges ................................................................................... 2745 2. Common Features of Privileges ............................................................................... 2748 3. Confidentiality Without Privilege ........................................................................... 2750 4. The Current Stored Communications Act Privilege ............................................. 2753 B. The Rules that Govern Statutory Privilege Construction .......................................... 2757 1. The Strict Construction Rule ................................................................................... 2757 2. Express Statutory Privileges .................................................................................... 2762 3. Implied Statutory Privileges .................................................................................... 2767 4. Misconstruing the Stored Communications Act .................................................... 2773 III. THE POLICY OF AN INTERNET COMMUNICATIONS PRIVILEGE ......................... 2778 A. Correcting the Current Case Law ................................................................................. 2779 1. Privacy Interests ........................................................................................................ 2779 2. Service Provider Interests ........................................................................................ 2782 B. Considering a Novel “Medium” Privilege for the Internet ....................................... 2785 1. Privacy and Privilege Law’s Shared Theoretical Concerns ................................. 2786 2. Applying Privilege Analysis to the Internet ........................................................... 2788 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................... 2792 2721 PRIVACY AS PRIVILEGE: THE STORED COMMUNICATIONS ACT AND INTERNET EVIDENCE Rebecca Wexler∗ This Article exposes a profound and growing injustice that major technology companies have propagated through every level of the judiciary under the guise of protecting data privacy. The Supreme Court has repeatedly proclaimed: “In our judicial system, the public has a right to every [person’s] evidence.” Yet, for over a decade, Facebook, GitHub, Google, Instagram, Microsoft, and Twitter have leveraged the Stored Communications Act (SCA) — a key data privacy law for the internet — to bar criminal defendants from subpoenaing the contents of another’s online communications, even when those communications could exonerate the wrongfully accused. Every appellate court to rule on this issue to date has agreed with the companies. This Article argues that all of these decisions are wrong as a matter of binding Supreme Court doctrine and just policy. The Article makes two novel doctrinal claims and then evaluates the policy consequences of those claims. First, when courts read the SCA to block criminal defense subpoenas, they construe the statute as creating an evidentiary privilege. Second, this construction violates a binding rule of privilege law: courts must not construe ambiguous silence in statutory text as impliedly creating a privilege because privileges are “in derogation of the search for truth.” This Article is the first to read the SCA through the lens of evidentiary privilege law. Overturning the conventional wisdom and correcting the erroneous case law on this issue will enhance truth-seeking and fairness in the criminal justice system with minimal cost to privacy. ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– ∗ Assistant Professor, University of California, Berkeley School of Law. This Article received the 2020 Privacy Law Scholars Conference Reidenberg-Kerr Award for “overall excellence of a paper submitted by a pre-tenure scholar.” This Article benefited from workshops at Berkeley School of Law, Fordham University School of Law, The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, UCLA School of Law, University of California, Irvine School of Law, University of Chicago Law School, Stanford Law School, Yale Law School, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, the Privacy Law Scholars Conference, the Privacy Law Forum, the Internet Law Works-in-Progress Conference, and the Evidence Summer Workshop. For detailed comments on prior drafts, the author thanks Dan Burk, Simon Cole, Vikas Didwania, Mark Gergen, Aziz Huq, Edward Imwinkelried, Orin Kerr, Paul Ohm, Andrea Peterson, Andrea Roth, Pam Samuelson, Paul Schwartz, and Ari Waldman. The author thanks Ron Allen, Jack Balkin, Ken Bamberger, Bicka Barlow, Franziska Boehm, Kiel Brennan-Marquez, Ryan Calo, Linc Caplan, Erwin Chemerinsky, Bryan Choi, Danielle Citron, Julie Cohen, Catherine Crump, Ellen Deason, Jim Dempsey, Deven Desai, Niva Elkin-Koren, Hanni Fakhoury, Peter Galison, Brandon Garrett, Jonah Gelbach, Albert Gidari, Jonathan Gould, Megan Graham, Jerome Greco, Woodrow Hartzog, Chris Hoofnagle, Kirsty Hughes, Pam Karlan, Don Landis, Mark Lemley, Karen Levy, William McGeveran, Priscilla Regan, David Sklansky, Tyler Slay, Chris Soghoian, Jeff Stein, Steven Sugarman, Olivier Sylvain, Kate Tesch, Maggie Wittlin, and Diego Zambrano. This Article benefited immensely from reference support from Doug Avila, Marci Hoffman, Dean Rowan, and I-Wei Wang, and from research assistance from Kristina Chamorro, Robert Fairbanks, Chelsea Hanlock, Joon Hwang, Joseph Kroon, David Murdter, Shreya Santhanam, Cheyenne Smith, Nivedita Soni, Tyler Takemoto, and Daniela Wertheimer. The editors of the Harvard Law Review provided invaluable editorial assistance. 2722 2021] PRIVACY AS PRIVILEGE 2723 INTRODUCTION A homicide defendant in California was blocked from arguing self- defense because he was denied access to the records of harassing online messages and death threats that had kept him “in constant fear for his life.”1 A murder defendant in the District of Columbia was denied ac- cess to impeachment material from a key prosecution witness’s social media accounts, despite the trial judge’s finding that the evidence was relevant, material, and necessary to vindicate his “fundamental consti- tutional rights.”2 A death row inmate in Texas was denied access to the source code for a forensic software program used to analyze the evidence against him, despite a judge’s finding that the code was “material and necessary for the administration of justice.”3 An Iraqi refugee, accused of terrorism and facing extradition, torture, and “almost certain death,”4 was denied access to Facebook and Twitter posts that might have helped exonerate him.5 The Supreme Court has repeatedly declared: “In our judicial system, the public has a right to every [person’s] evidence.”6 Yet, in each of these cases, and many more like them,7 technology companies, including ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 1 Opposition to Non-party Instagram Motion to Quash Subpoena Duces Tecum at 5, People v. [Redacted], No. [Redacted] (Cal. Super. Ct. Nov. 13, 2018) (on file with the Harvard Law School Library) [hereinafter Opp’n to Instagram Motion]; see also id. at 1 & n.1, 4–6, 8; id. at 14 Exhibit A (subpoena duces tecum to Facebook, Inc. (Instagram)). 2 Brief for the United States at 3, Facebook, Inc. v. Wint, 199 A.3d 625 (D.C. 2019) (No. 18-SS- 958) (on file with the Harvard Law School Library) (describing the trial court’s order denying Facebook’s motion to quash); see also Wint, 199 A.3d. at 628; Brief for the United States, supra, at 4. 3 Order and Certificate, Ex parte Colone, No. 10-10213 (Tex. Dist. Ct. Jan. 3, 2020) (on file with the Harvard Law School Library); see Protective Order, Ex parte Colone, No. 10-10213 (Tex. Dist. Ct. Nov. 21, 2019) (on file with the Harvard Law School Library); Order Denying Petitioner Joseph Colone’s Amended Notice of Motion and Motion to Compel Production of Records Pursuant to Cal. Penal Code 1334.2, In re Colone, No. 20-517083 (Cal. Super. Ct. July 28, 2020) (on file with the Harvard Law School Library) [hereinafter Order Denying Colone’s Motion]. 4 Ben Taub, The Fight to Save an Innocent Refugee from Almost Certain Death, NEW YORKER (Jan. 20, 2020), https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/01/27/the-fight-to-save-an-innocent- refugee-from-almost-certain-death [https://perma.cc/53Y7-WVHN]. 5 Audrey McNamara, Facebook, Twitter Withheld Data that Could Prove Refugee’s Innocence in Murder Case, Attorneys Say, CBS