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Kill the Dinosaurs, and Other Tips for Achieving Technical Competence in Your Law Practice

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Cite as: Antigone Peyton, Kill the Dinosaurs, and Other Tips for Achieving Technical Competence in Your Law Practice, 21 Rich. J.L. & Tech. 7 (2015), http://jolt.richmond.edu/v21i3/article7.pdf.

by Antigone Peyton*

I.  Introduction

[1]       It is a challenge to practice law in the digital age.  This is particularly true when a practice involves significant e-Discovery, Intellectual Property, and technology law—areas in which technical issues merge with legal ones.  One of the major challenges of bringing a law practice up to twenty-first-century standards relates to dinosaur thoughts, a.k.a. an “old ways are best” mentality.

[2]       Recent spectacular corporate data losses and publicized hacks highlight the frequency and scale of cybersecurity issues.[1]  At least one leaked global surveillance effort focused on electronic information involving U.S. law firms,[2] and hackers’ focus on high-value information repositories, like law firms, has increased.[3]  These realities have sensitized clients to the importance of data protection protocols and secure infrastructure.[4]  In the era of Edward Snowden,[5] WikiLeaks,[6] and global surveillance nets,[7] firms must vigilantly guard against unauthorized third-party access to sensitive client information and privileged communications.  All of this highlights the importance of technical competence in the practice of law.

II.  Dinosaurs Take Risks with Technology

[3]       There are many dinosaur thoughts pervading lawyers’ views regarding the adequacy of their technical knowledge, practices, and systems.  Dinosaurs say quaint things like:

·      “Fax and e-mail are secure ways to communicate with clients.”

·      “It’s ok to use public WiFi, as long as it’s the airport, hotel, or Starbucks.”

·      “E-Discovery is just like paper discovery, except there’s no boxes or warehouses.”

·      “I don’t see a problem with using my firm-issued smart phone to download my favorite free game app and post comments and pictures on social media.”

Dinosaur thoughts can cause trouble if Information Technology (IT) personnel or other colleagues at the firm do not temper them and educate their colleagues regarding the risks.

A.  The Old World Is a Dangerous Place to Live

[4]       About a decade ago, the groundbreaking Zubulake series of opinions were issued. [8]  These cases laid the groundwork for the concept that technical competence is a necessary component of effective legal representation and our ethical obligation to clients.[9]  Dinosaur thoughts were not welcome in Judge Scheindlin’s courtroom then, nor are they today.  Now more judges are talking about the importance of technical competence, particularly when dealing with e-Discovery issues and noncompliance with increasingly complex electronic filing rules and procedures.[10]  As the district court vented in Allstate Ins. Co. v. Linea Latina de Accidentes, Inc.,

 Every federal district now has embraced electronic filing.  The days of attorneys being able to ignore the computer and shift blame to support staff in the event of an error are gone.  The consequences are simply too serious.  To the extent there are attorneys practicing in federal court who are under the impression that someone in the Clerk’s office will comb their filings for errors and call them with a heads-up, the Court delivers this message: It is the responsibility of counsel to ensure that personal identifiers are properly redacted.[11]

The above-mentioned district court sanctioned a lawyer who filed a Complaint with attachments containing personal identifiers in unredacted form.[12]  He then refiled the documents when the defendants raised a concern regarding the information that had not been redacted.[13]

[5]       The second filing was not much better, as it contained removable redactions that could be deleted and expose the underlying information.[14]  Counsel did not understand how to properly apply redactions to a PDF image.[15]

[6]       In delivering its sanction decision, the court concluded that attorneys “who are slow to change run the very real risk of sanctions,” and there was no excuse for not complying with the Federal Rule’s requirement of redacting personal information from public electronic filings.[16]

B.  Rise of the Technology Lawyers

[7]       Lawyers need some technical competence if they are practicing law today, though the skills and knowledge needed vary widely depending on their practice areas and client needs.  In fact, in August 2012 the American Bar Association (ABA) approved a resolution that changed the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct (Model Rules) and included technical competency requirements.[17]  This change requires lawyers to keep pace with “relevant technology” to comply with their ethical obligation to competently represent clients.[18]

[8]       Model Rule 1.1 addresses the “client-lawyer” relationship and provides that a lawyer owes clients a duty of competence.[19]  This Rule explains: “[a] lawyer shall provide competent representation to a client.  Competent representation requires the legal knowledge, skill, thoroughness and preparation reasonably necessary for the representation.”[20]  While the Rule remains the same, Comment 8 now explains that lawyers should become educated regarding the benefits and risks associated with technology relevant to their practice.[21]  This amendment to Comment 8 illustrates the ABA’s desire to highlight the important role that technology plays in the practice of law today.[22]

[9]       This seemingly minor change to an advisory comment is significant because the Model Rules serve as a guide for the ethical rules governing lawyers in most states, including Virginia.[23]  The Model Rules now formally require lawyers in those jurisdictions following them to understand technology, including technology that relates to fulfilling e-Discovery obligations and protection of client confidences.  Failure to comply with these ethics rules can lead to temporary or permanent disbarment or suspension of their license to practice law.[24]

[10]     Rules aside, in-house counsel should understand the level of technical proficiency required for their internal team and outside counsel to competently represent the company’s interests, and they should hire accordingly.  Outside counsel must receive education regarding the technologies that support the practice, clients’ businesses, and best practices that minimize risks and maximize benefits associated with its use.  Additionally, technical competence is important to satisfy counsel’s obligations to the Court, the clients, and the opposing parties in a litigation or regulatory investigation.

[11]     In short, lawyers are practicing law in a brave new world, and technology plays a starring role.  Whether it is a predictive coding technology, cell phone tracking technology, or a firm’s or company’s communication software and systems—lawyers must roll up their sleeves and learn how to use it.

III.  Running the Shop

[12]     Regardless of size, law firms are becoming more reliant on technology to manage their day-to-day activities, interact with clients, and find critical information among massive data repositories and across the Internet.  Many cases filed in federal courts are subject to electronic document filing requirements, and state courts are following this trend.[25]  With this increased use of technology, a number of risks arise that can harm a firm’s reputation or result in loss of clients’ data and legal liability.  This paper discusses some common risks that firms should be aware of as well as ways in which they can minimize them.

A.  The Nature of the Risk

[13]     Law firms tend to foster a target-rich environment for data theft.[26]  One important risk that law firms must anticipate—and prepare a rapid response plan for—involves security breaches.  There are three major categories of reported data loss breaches involving lawyers and law firms: disposal of client records, mobile device theft or loss, and misuse of firm systems and security protocols.[27]  Other losses can occur because of lax policies, inadequate training, or the inattention of system users.[28]

B.  Data Security Technologies in the Modern Firm

[14]     Law firms often hold a high concentration of clients’ most sensitive information in their files.  State-sponsored hackers have been blamed for several high-profile law firm data breaches motivated by an interest in merger and acquisition information, intellectual property assets, and other sensitive strategic or competitive information.[29] This information may be easily obtainable because of the simple Account-Matter structure that law firms use to keep their client files organized.  However, client systems may be difficult to understand, and it is often harder for outsiders to identify the subset of information they seek.  Lawyers who have pulled a complicated client database or shared team folder can likely commiserate.

1.  Password Management & Security

[15]     Technology systems often require strong passwords and multi-step authentication processes upon sign-in and sign out or lock access after a period of inactivity or attempted access from a suspicious IP address.[30]  These layers of protection are built into technology for a reason, but they can be easily circumvented by poor password management and careless security policies.

[16]     Passwords should be between sixteen and twenty-four or more characters, depending upon the field limits of the software.  Ideal passwords include special characters, uppercase and lowercase letters, and numbers.  Firm employees should be required to change their passwords regularly and should not use the same password for all systems.  Particularly for financial institution access and client data systems, the password used should be complex and unique to that system.  Never keep a temporary or default password provided when receiving access to software or new hardware such as computers and routers.  Some defaults are as simple as username: “admin” and password: “1234.”

[17]     Many people feel overwhelmed by the number of passwords they must track for personal use or firm systems.  Using password management software to store passwords in one place and ensure that newly generated passwords meet certain requirements is an excellent first line of defense.

[18]     Web browsers’ (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Internet Explorer) built-in password storage systems have known security issues,[31] and they should be avoided.  Cloud-based systems such as 1Password, KeePass, Roboform Everywhere, and LastPass are more robust than browser management systems and are designed to securely store passwords for websites, mobile apps, notes, credit card information, and other sensitive information.  Many of these management systems can be accessed across platforms, meaning they work on computers, smartphones, and tablet devices equally well.[32]  Several offer the ability to generate random secure passwords, audit your existing passwords, and analyze them to identify those that may have been compromised by major security breaches like the Heartbleed Security Bug of 2014.[33]  All password management systems have potential vulnerabilities,[34] but they are better than a note stuck on your computer.

2.  Data & Traffic Encryption

[19]     Firms should also be using encryption technology to share information between an individual computer, mobile device, or web browser and the system or database where the information resides or a communication is sent.  This is true regardless of whether the information is transferred over the Internet, via cellular and satellite communication channels, or using landlines.

[20]     You might use a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to securely connect the computer networks for two geographically distant offices or connect to your office’s systems while traveling.  Some firms use VPN technologies to encrypt all of their Internet traffic, whether they are in or outside the office, to add another layer of security while the information is in transit.[35]  Other variants on the VPN connection take advantage of the functionality, security, and other benefits obtained from data protection and management protocols.[36]  The right protocol for a firm will depend on the firm’s other security measures and infrastructure and what types of communications will be covered.

[21]     Like data on the move, sensitive data at rest should also be encrypted.  Media coverage of data breaches involving lost laptops that resulted in the potential exposure of very sensitive client or employee information remind us that the loss of one device connected to the firm network can be catastrophic.  Firm laptops and mobile devices should be protected with whole disk encryption or biometric access options and automated device wipe functions if someone tries to access the device without authorization.

[22]     Certain document and data management systems and encryption technologies like FileVault, LUKS, or BitLocker give firms the option to encrypt sensitive information (like client data) where it is stored on a Mac, Linux, or Microsoft system, respectively.[37]  This means that even if someone else—such as a disgruntled former employee or a hacker—accessed the encrypted data, they would be unable to read it without the decryption key.

[23]     While it may seem obvious, the encryption key should not reside on the same system or in a location where it may be accessible to a third party, such as an employee of the cloud-computing provider hosting the document management system.  Public cloud document providers such as Google Drive, Box.net, and Dropbox, which are popular client file storage solutions used by some small and mid-sized law firms, have been criticized for violating this simple data-protection rule.[38]

3.  Security Vulnerabilities

[24]     At a recent Black Hat security conference in Nevada, several researchers disclosed that USB drives can be corrupted with undetectable malware that infects the device and any computer it is connected to.[39]  The researchers disclosed this vulnerability to the USB manufacturers months before the code for those attacks was published in an attempt to spur changes in the manufacturing process and fix these vulnerabilities.[40]

[25]     If a firm does allow USB drives, the firm IT staff might monitor and log activity involving the USB ports of firm equipment.  USB ports are a common vulnerability point for employees or unauthorized third parties to access firm systems and inject viruses or download information that should not leave the firm systems on a separate hard drive.[41]  Without logging, it is hard to prove what and how much information was copied—or who did it.[42]

[26]     Successful firms use a combination of human and software technical support to protect firm systems, equipment, and network against spam, viruses, and malware.  If a firm allows client access to its wireless network, it may want to rethink that strategy.  Once one piece of equipment is infected, it can infect every piece of equipment on the network.[43]  In contrast, if every lawyer’s device is “authorized” to access the firm network and the clients are relegated to a separate secured client wireless network, this provides an added layer of protection for the firm’s systems and equipment.[44]  As previously mentioned, it is a good idea to use encryption for all communications shuttled through the firm’s network.  A competent IT provider should be advising the firm to use security protocols that are adequate in light of the importance and sensitivity of the information that is shared on that network.[45]

4.  Log History & Restricted Access

[27]     Vulnerability issues arise with unsecured File Transfer Protocol (FTP) sites that use the “honor access system,” systems on which any user can issue new user credentials.[46]  The honor system sounds nice, but if a former employee creates new credentials for themselves and accesses information they placed on the site after leaving the company, it is hard to un-ring that bell or determine what information they took.  Often FTP server log files are only kept for a specific (short) period of time.[47]  If the theft is discovered after the log file is destroyed, the primary evidence of theft may be gone forever.

[28]     This illustrates just one area where there is a genuine need for certain technology within the firm to be inaccessible to certain employees who neither need nor merit access to the information contained within it.  This also demonstrates the importance of an IT manager’s oversight of access history and file changes.  In a utopian world, lawyers would all trust their peers to make good decisions 100% of the time, but in the real world they have a duty to verify reasonably diligent behavior when it comes to client confidences.

5.  Due Diligence & Electronic Housekeeping

[29]     With any data system accessible over the Internet, good physical and electronic security measures are crucial.  Firms must do their research before implementing any firm data storage system on site or in the cloud.  Here are some basic questions they might ask during the due diligence process:

•     What is the geographic location of the data center, and what protections have been implemented at that site?

•     Is someone in charge of applying patches and upgrades, particularly updates that address known security vulnerabilities and stability issues?

•     What happens if the primary system goes down; is there a live, redundant backup that is geographically distant from the primary data site?

•     Is there an offline backup, and how often is that backup created?

•     What is the security policy and compliance protocol for the backup solution?

•     Does the provider have direct access to the data, or is it pre-encrypted before being uploaded to the provider?

These are just a few of the questions a firm should cover when considering where and with whom they will store their firm and client data.  Should a data breach involving firm or client information occur, the firm’s diligence in choosing the data storage provider and implementing sound system policies and protections may become a central issue in triggering insurance coverage, weathering legal ramifications of the breach, and managing client communications after any notifications occur.[48]

[30]     It is a bad idea to share passwords and login information.  Often, it is considered a violation of the Terms of Service or Service Level Agreement when a lawyer or other firm employee signs or clicks through a site under another user’s access credentials when purchasing a particular software product or a user license to a product.[49]

[31]     In certain circumstances, such a situation can violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA)¾a quasi-criminal statute aimed at unauthorized access to proprietary and confidential information on computer systems—or the Stored Communications Act (SCA)¾which protects against unauthorized interception of electronic information if access to the stored communication was “without authorization”[50] or “exceeds authorized access.”[51]

[32]     Both statutes provide for civil liability in particular circumstances.[52]  If an assistant or another employee who has access to other employees’ account passwords leaves on bad terms, it will be hard to isolate and deal with their unauthorized access to the system using another person’s credentials.  And it is difficult to justify the decision to share passwords to the firm’s IT personnel when they have to shut down a lawyer’s user accounts and issue new ones, with new credentials.  Just don not do it.

[33]     Additionally, sometimes law firms are required (or decide) to delete client data, a litigation opponent’s information, or firm electronic records.  When deleting confidential records, consider servers and their backup systems, computers and mobile devices, external drives including USB drives, disks such as CD-ROMs and other non-reusable physical media.

[34]     At a minimum, delete the electronic files and then empty the trash bin.  Optimally, use a secure deletion method like a file shredder program that performs a permanent delete and overwrites the disk several times.[53]  Physical media should be securely destroyed.[54]  Firms should only keep encrypted copies of the minimum data necessary to comply with a data retention policy, legal, or business requirement.

[35]     Many firms are notorious data hoarders and seem to hold old records without any legitimate business justification—such firms have a “sub-standard” information governance and recordkeeping model.[55]  Legitimate business justifications for retaining electronic information do not include “I may need that information someday—you never know.”

6.  Cloud Computing

[36]     Many papers, blog posts, and books have been written about the benefits and risks of using cloud-computing technologies.[56]  This paper will not focus on the benefits and risk analysis that should occur when contemplating adding cloud technologies to the firm’s system.

[37]     However, if a firm is considering a cloud computing solution, which means it will be using computing resources that are delivered over the Internet via a web browser or other interface, it needs to carefully read the documents that cover the contracts that provide the terms of the engagement with the cloud provider.[57]  Some standard contracts state that the cloud provider owns the data, lack an assurance that the system will be live, or lack tools to export data once it is in the cloud system.[58]

[38]     Analyze whether it is reasonable to place certain data in a cloud provider’s hands if they refuse to meet the firm’s needs and expectations.  Also, check the firm’s state bar website for current ethics opinions on this subject before moving to the cloud.  At least nineteen states have issued ethics opinions that directly or indirectly address this subject.[59]  All of those states have indicated that cloud computing or other similar technologies can be used in the practice of law but that reasonable care should be exercised to determine whether a particular provider is appropriate in a particular situation.[60]

[39]     In considering options among cloud computing providers, a firm’s investigation should delve into the question of whether the files are hidden from the cloud provider’s employees.  It would be a huge security risk if any employee who had access to the firm’s accounts could view clients’ files.

[40]     A more subtle risk involves firm employees use of their personal cloud accounts to shuttle files between the office and home.  Ultimately, this opportunity can be used for nefarious purposes, as was the case when one employee of a popular social gaming company allegedly stole confidential trade secrets using his personal Dropbox account before resigning from the company.[61]

7.  Mobile Devices

[41]     Many lawyers have a mobile phone attached to their hand and a tablet in their bag whenever they travel.  Firm employees should use a PIN or password on their mobile device and IT managers should enable remote wiping and tracking technologies in case a device is lost or stolen.

[42]     Additionally, most smartphones and tablets write a surprising amount of data to the device hard drive.[62]  For instance, if a lawyer opens a client document attached to an e-mail on their phone, the device usually stores that information on the hard drive.  Unlike traditional desktop systems, it is very hard to delete these types of files from the mobile device hard drive.[63]  Sometimes, the entire device has to be wiped in order to delete sensitive files that can be casually accessed on them.[64]

[43]     Now, I like mobile app games as much as the next person, but beware of apps that collect and share other data available on the device.  Many mobile apps and mobile system software track a user’s location, web browsing history, purchases, and a host of other information that you may not want to share.[65]  After a number of high profile blow-ups, some privacy controls have been implemented on mobile platforms.[66]  Users need to learn how to access these privacy controls through their system settings and review the terms for any app they download on a device.

[44]     Some free apps give users access to games or information, then collect lots of data from their device.[67]  Other apps deliver targeted ads based upon information that connects a person and past activities on that device.[68]  These seemingly harmless mobile apps represent security breach risks to the firm.  For example, researchers recently revealed that most of the top flashlight apps available on the Android platform are actually spyware.[69]  It can be creepy once one digs into the data being collected and the surveillance that occurs with or without their knowledge.

[45]     Here is another situation that illustrates the problems associated with unmanaged data collection by mobile apps.  Imagine a firm lawyer takes a picture with their phone and posts it on Facebook.  This may reveal their location at the time the picture was taken or when they accessed the Facebook app to post the picture.  What if opposing counsel learned that lawyer is in New York the night before a big hearing because their social media post included their current location?  The fact that the lawyer will be arguing an important motion the next day may be something they did not want to share with opposing counsel ahead of time.

8.  Social Media

[46]     There are many potential pitfalls associated with the use of social media or social media management apps on firm devices.  Be wary of social media applications and platforms, as they are frequently invaded by cybercriminals and hacktivists.[70]  Giving another application access to your credentials for one site or account could result in other linked accounts being hijacked.

[47]     Facebook is a well-known example of a social media site that has seen its share of hacks and complaints about unauthorized sharing of private data with other sites and companies.[71]  Even though Facebook now sends all hyperlinks through Websense first (a vast improvement), be wary of clicking on them.[72]  The firm should have a social media policy and a plan for responding if client confidences or other sensitive information leave the firm through a social media outlet, and it should train everyone in the firm to be responsible ambassadors of the firm brand and client information when using social media.

9.  Travel Troubles

[48]     Attorneys often travel for depositions or client meetings, and they can be most vulnerable to data breaches when on the road.  Aside from remembering to encrypt traffic across open Internet connections, exercising good sense in not accessing client information in a manner that can be readily viewed or recorded by others would be wise.  With the advent of smartphone cameras and the ready availability of lapel cameras, a traveling lawyer would be wise to wait for the privacy of their hotel room to open and work on documents containing privileged information or work product.

[49]     It is easy to look over someone’s shoulder at the airport, on the plane, or in the hotel lobby.  And it can be particularly dangerous to rely on public WiFi or hotspots when traveling—they are often unencrypted and an excellent target for eavesdroppers who want to capture data packets and login credentials for any sites others access while on that WiFi network.[73]  For instance, the recent “Darkhotel” espionage campaign effectively targeted traveling business executives using hotel WiFi.[74]

[50]     Another key point to remember when traveling is that many cellular providers give users the ability to turn their smartphone into a hotspot, but this does not protect their Internet traffic in any way.  Using an unsecured mobile device as a WiFi hotspot for accessing the Internet on a laptop is a security concern.  Anyone within range can eavesdrop on the data a traveling lawyer sends or receives from the Internet and the mobile device.[75]  Some of the larger WiFi hotspot networks are secured (not open) and use enterprise-level security to protect a wireless connection on that network from eavesdroppers.[76]  These networks are a safer option.

[51]     Additionally, in the U.S., many large cellular providers encrypt the data traffic traveling to and from cell towers and the cellular device.  This connection may be slower than a traditional WiFi connection, but the security benefits are significant.  Finally, a VPN connection can be used on both WiFi and cell data connections.  Under these circumstances, all of the user’s Internet traffic and passwords travel through an encrypted tunnel, and already encrypted traffic enjoys double encryption.

10.  Insurance and Audits

[52]     Law firms have heightened responsibility for maintaining the confidentiality of client information because of their professional ethical requirements.  What should law firms be doing to better protect their data and deal with discovered breaches after they occur?

[53]     The firm should consider whether it needs cyber insurance to protect against the possible consequences of a breach.  Most general liability or professional liability insurance policies (and even umbrella business insurance policies) do not cover the cost of investigating a data breach, taking remedial steps to fix the problem, or notifying those who may be affected by it.  Cyber insurance policies are becoming more prevalent in many industries.

[54]     Additionally, the firm might hire someone to test the systems and determine technical and human areas of vulnerability.  Security audits may highlight practices or systems that should be changed in order to reduce these risks before a breach occurs.

11.  Hardware Vulnerabilities

[55]     As computer equipment ages and is replaced, it is vital to wipe all hard drives according to industry standards before either disposing of, or donating, those computers.  The Department of Defense DoD 5220.22-M (ECE) recommends seven complete wipes,[77] and there are a number of free or low cost products that can be used to wipe computers and external hard drives.

[56]     Every typical law office has a multi-function copier/scanner that is networked, and these devices always contain a hard drive with a copy of every page that has been either scanned or copied.  These represent a huge security risk for several reasons.  First, they are risky from a data perspective because of the massive number of stored documents sitting on an unencrypted hard drive in the machine.[78]  Second, their networked permissions often provide access to computers, but the copier/scanner itself has low security measures required to gain access.  People think nothing of leaving their copier code on a sticky note next to their computer—after all, what harm could that pose?  This means anyone who can gain access to the office can access the network through this simple “backdoor” methodology.

III.       What it Takes to Practice Law in the 21st Century

[57]     Law firms are becoming more reliant on technology to manage their day-to-day activities, interact with clients, and work on the substantive aspects of their job.  Now that we have identified dinosaur thoughts relating to technology, how do we extinguish them in the practice of law?  Well, initially, lawyers must purposefully focus on education initiatives involving relevant technology.  Extinguishing dinosaur thoughts also involves raising the bar and hiring good people who understand and embrace technology, then making them an integral part of the team.  Ultimately, law firms must become better stewards of their clients’ sensitive information and have protocols for holding or accessing it.

[58]     Security breaches do not occur at one single point of failure, but at several points.  Thus, a firm should verify that its IT provider is undertaking reasonable efforts to protect firm systems and equipment and ensure that firm employees are educated on those systems.  Finally, firms need to understand and take advantage of the security measures that are already built into the systems.

[59]     Diverse teams with different and complementary technical skills help law firms keep up with technology and continually evolve their practice.  As technology continues to take a starring role in firm infrastructure, processes, and communication channels (and clients’ businesses), lawyers must adapt and keep up with those changes—or go the way of the dinosaurs.


 

* Antigone Peyton is the founder and CEO of Cloudigy Law PLLC, an Intellectual Property and technology law firm located in McLean, Virginia. Antigone is an unabashed technophile focused on IP litigation and cutting-edge legal issues involving patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets.  A longstanding member of The Sedona Conference Working Group 1 (electronic document retention and production), Antigone is a frequent speaker and lecturer on law and technology issues involving IP, social media, cloud computing, big data, and eDiscovery and a technology panelist for EmeraldPlanetTV.
[1] See, e.g., Reuters, Aramco Says Cyberattack Was Aimed at Production, N.Y. Times, Dec. 10, 2012, at B2, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/10/business/global/saudi-aramco-says-hackers-took-aim-at-its-production.html, archived at http://perma.cc/39WX-7L76 (noting that “Cutting Sword of Justice” were credited for a hack wiping data from about 30,000 computers at Saudi Arabia’s national oil company, and that hackers are getting more creative, sometimes using devices that seem like everyday objects that belong in the workplace—like a cell phone charger); Greg Kumparak This Fake Phone Charger Is Actually Recording Every Key You Type, TechCrunch (Jan. 14, 2015), http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/14/this-fake-phone-charger-is-actually-recording-every-key-you-type/, archived at http://perma.cc/P4TC-M846 (crediting a fake phone charger that logs the information you type on a wireless keyboard to Samy Kamkar); Kim Zetter, Logic Bomb Set Off South Korea Cyberattack, Wired (Mar. 21, 2013, 7:05 PM), http://www.wired.com/2013/03/logic-bomb-south-korea-attack/, archived at http://perma.cc/3RL8-CA8Q (noting that several banks and broadcasting companies were attacked by a logic bomb that wiped computer hard drives and master boot records that interrupted ATM operations in South Korea); Kim Zetter, Sony Got Hacked Hard: What We Know and Don’t Know So Far, Wired (Dec. 3, 2014, 4:02 PM), http://www.wired.com/2014/12/sony-hack-what-we-know/, archived at http://perma.cc/VL6R-TJ2V (discussing that hacktivists “Guardians of Peace” stole up to 100 terabytes of data from Sony, including login credentials and documents with personal employee information).

[2] See, e.g., James Risen & Laura Poitras, Spying by N.S.A. Ally Entangled U.S. Law Firm, N.Y. Times, Feb. 16, 2014, at A1, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/16/us/eavesdropping-ensnared-american-law-firm.html, archived at http://perma.cc/AD5Y-G3FT.

[3] See, e.g., Jennifer Smith, Client Secrets at Risk as Hackers Target Law Firms, Wall St. J. (June. 25, 2012, 2:21 PM), http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/06/25/dont-click-on-that-link-client-secrets-at-risk-as-hackers-target-law-firms/, archived at http://perma.cc/B696-8ZBB.

[4] See Matthew Goldstein, Law Firms Are Pressed on Security for Data, N.Y. Times, Mar. 27, 2014, at B1, available at http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/03/26/law-firms-scrutinized-as-hacking-increases/, archived at http://perma.cc/6Z34-3BGL.

[5] See, e.g., Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill & Laura Poitras, Edward Snowden: The Whistleblower behind the NSA Surveillance Revelations, Guardian (June 11, 2013, 9:00 AM), http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance, archived at http://perma.cc/D9PZ-KYCH.

[6] See, e.g., Scott Shane & Andrew W. Lehren, Leaked Cables Offer Raw Look at U.S. Diplomacy, N.Y. Times, Nov. 29, 2010, at A1, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/world/29cables.html, archived at http://perma.cc/H9AU-D3GF.

[7] See, e.g., David Ljunggren & Mike De Souza, Snowden Files Show Canada Spy Agency Runs Global Internet Watch: CBC, Reuters, (Jan. 28, 2015), http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/28/us-canada-spying-idUSKBN0L11W520150128, archived at http://perma.cc/HK3N-GDBF.

[8] See Victor Li, Looking Back on Zubulake, 10 Years Later, A.B.A. J. (Sept. 1, 2014, 10:30 A.M.), http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/looking_back_on_zubulake_10_years_later, archived at http://perma.cc/965H-GF38 (discussing the Zubulake opinions and their impact on the body of case law relating to e-Discovery and a lawyer’s obligations including a minimal level of technical competence).

[9] See id.

[10] See, e.g., Baella-Silva v. Hulsey, 454 F.3d 5, 11–12 (1st Cir. 2006) (affirming a $50,000 sanction against a party for electronically filing a confidential settlement document and failing to take the proper precautions to preserve confidentiality in an electronically filed document that could lead to sanctions or other liabilities).

[11] Allstate Ins. Co. v. Linea Latina De Accidentes, Inc., No. 09-3681, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 124773, at *8 (D. Minn. Nov. 24, 2010).

[12] See id. at 3, 10–11.

[13] See id. at 4–5.

[14] See id. at 6–7.

[15] See id. at 5–7.

[16] 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 124773, at 8–9.

[17] See, e.g., ABA Comm. on Ethics, Res. 105C, 1–2 (2012) (report to the House of Delegates), available at http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/ethics_2020/2012_hod_annual_meeting_105c.authcheckdam.pdf; ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20, archived at http://perma.cc/S2XZ-WQS6; ABA, ABA House of Delegates Approves Commission’s Resolutions (Aug. 6, 2012), http://www.americanbar.org/groups/professional_responsibility/aba_commission_on_ethics_20_20.html, archived at http://perma.cc/3QF7-FL4L.

[18] Model Rules of Prof’l Conduct R. 1.1 cmt. 8 (2014).

[19] See id. at R. 1.1.

[20] Id.

[21] See id. at cmt. 8 (“To maintain the requisite knowledge and skill, a lawyer should keep abreast of changes in the law and its practice, including the benefits and risks associated with relevant technology, engage in continuing study and education and comply with all continuing legal education requirements to which the lawyer is subject.”) (emphasis added).

[22] See, e.g., Matt Nelson, New Changes to Model Rules a Wake-Up Call for Technology Challenged Lawyers, InsideCounsel (Mar. 28, 2013), http://www.insidecounsel.com/2013/03/28/new-changes-to-model-rules-a-wake-up-call-for-tech, archived at http://perma.cc/9U6Q-XT33 (noting the report accompanying the resolution suggests this was always a component of the competence standard for lawyers and that “[t]he proposed amendment, which appears in a Comment, does not impose any new obligations on lawyers.  Rather, the amendment is intended to serve as a reminder to lawyers that they should remain aware of technology, including the benefits and risks associated with it, as part of a lawyer’s general ethical duty to remain competent.”).

[23] See, e.g., Chronological List of States Adopting Model Rules, ABA Center for Prof. Resp., http://www.americanbar.org/groups/professional_responsibility/publications/model_rules_of_professional_conduct/chrono_list_state_adopting_model_rules.html, archived at http://perma.cc/2AJL-EG7V (last visited Feb. 12, 2015).

[24] See Model Rules of Prof’l Conduct Scope para. 19–20 (2014).

[25] See, e.g., Electronic Filing and Case Management, U.S. Dist. Ct. Cent. Dist. Cal., http://www.cacd.uscourts.gov/e-filing, archived at http://perma.cc/VX2T-JQTH (last visited Feb. 12, 2015) (“[E]lectronic filing is mandatory in all civil and criminal cases in the Central District of California.”); EFiling, Super. Ct. Cal. County Orange, http://www.occourts.org/online-services/efiling/, archived at http://perma.cc/JY6H-2Z2D (last visited Feb. 12, 2015) (“Pursuant to section 1010.6 of the Code of Civil Procedure, rule 2.253(b)(2) of the California Rules of Court, Orange County Superior Court Local Rule 352, and Local Rule 601.01 all documents filed by attorneys in probate, limited civil, unlimited civil, and complex civil actions . . . must be filed electronically unless the Court rules otherwise.”).

[26] See, e.g., Lolita C. Baldor, FBI: Hackers Targeting Law and PR Firms, NBC News (Nov. 17, 2009, 10:58 AM), http://www.nbcnews.com/id/33991440/ns/technology_and_science-security/t/fbi-hackers-targeting-law-pr-firms/#.VMKMdV6hy7x, archived at http://perma.cc/C6LS-2GJ8 (discussing the November 1, 2009 FBI issued advisory warning to law firms that hackers were specifically targeting them); Goldstein, supra note 4 (discussing that in 2011, the FBI began organizing meetings with top law firms in the U.S. to highlight the cybersecurity and corporate espionage risks, particularly for firms with offices in countries like Russia and China and in 2012, security company Mandiant reported that an estimated 80% of the 100 largest American law firms had some malicious computer breach in 2011).

[27] See Matthew H. Meade, Lawyers and Data Security: Understanding a Lawyer’s Ethical and Legal Obligations that Arise from Handling Personal Information Provided by Clients, 28 Computer & Internet Law. 1, 1 (2011).

[28] See id. at 2–3.

[29] See, e.g., Michael A. Riley & Sophia Pearson, China-Based Hackers Target Law Firms to Get Secret Deal Data, Bloomberg (Jan. 31, 2012, 4:37 PM), http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-31/china-based-hackers-target-law-firms.html, archived at http://perma.cc/T6LY-2P4N (noting that China-based hackers targeted several law firms while they were involved in a $40 Billion company takeover deal); see also Breaking the Law: How Legal Firms Get Hacked, ZeroFOX (May 20, 2014) [hereinafter Breaking the Law], http://www.zerofox.com/whatthefoxsays/breaking-law-legal-firms-get-hacked/#.VMKOR16hy7x, archived at http://perma.cc/6CH8-C3QB.

[30] IT Examination Handbook InfoBase: Authentication, FFIEC, http://ithandbook.ffiec.gov/it-booklets/information-security/security-controls-implementation/access-control-/authentication.aspx, archived at http://perma.cc/V89D-978R (last visited Feb. 16, 2015).

[31] See Melanie Pinola, Which Password Manager Is the Most Secure?, Lifehacker (Sept. 20, 2012, 10:00 AM), http://lifehacker.com/5944969/which-password-manager-is-the-most-secure, archived at http://perma.cc/5FC7-YWYP (noting that Malware or tools like WebBrowserPassView can reveal passwords stored in web browsers because those systems rely on the computer login as the cypher for the encrypted password data stored by the browsers, and that web-based password managers that rely on a master password to gain access to the management system are generally more secure options); see also Jill Scharr, Google Chrome’s Security Flaw: How to Safely Store Passwords, Tom’s Guide (Aug. 8, 2013, 11:54 PM), http://www.tomsguide.com/us/chrome-security-password-saver,review-1840.html, archived at http://perma.cc/K24P-UB6W (discussing Google Chrome’s lack of security measures for data storage, easily allowing unwanted access to the user’s password in unencrypted plain text).

[32] Best Password Manager: Dashlane Vs Lastpass Vs 1Password Vs Roboform Vs KeePass, A Secure Life (last updated Mar. 4, 2015), http://www.asecurelife.com/dashlane-vs-lastpass-vs-1password-vs-roboform-vs-keepass/, archived at http://perma.cc/A4PB-9ZQ3.

[33] See The Heartbleed Bug, Heartbleed.com, http://heartbleed.com/, archived at http://perma.cc/8KMU-3NAA (explaining that the Heartbleed Bug allows unwelcome individuals to read the memory of systems protected by versions of the OpenSSL software with design flaws).

[34] See, e.g., Greg Kumparak, LastPass Finds Security Holes in Its Online Password Manager, Doesn’t Think Anyone Exploited Them, TechCrunch (July 11, 2014), http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/11/lastpass-finds-security-holes-in-its-online-password-manager-doesnt-think-anyone-exploited-them/, archived at http://perma.cc/P446-KECS (discussing the discovery of two security flaws in LastPass online password manager products).

[35] See, e.g., VPN Technologies: Definitions and Requirements, VPN Consortium (July 2008), http://www.vpnc.org/vpn-technologies.html, archived at http://perma.cc/724G-UD48.

[36] See id.

[37] See William Ruddy, Moving on After TrueCrypt’s Untimely Departure, Phoenix TS Blog (June 26, 2014), http://www.phoenixts.com/blog/moving-on-after-truecrypt, archived at http://perma.cc/FQC2-8DE4.  In May of 2014, TrueCrypt developers stopped supporting this open encryption software system after Microsoft terminated its support of WindowsXP.  TrueCrypt, http://truecrypt.sourceforge.net/, archived at http://perma.cc/R7HA-JKGJ (last visited Feb. 12, 2015) (“WARNING: Using TrueCrypt is not secure as it may contain unfixed security issues”).  Later versions of the Windows operating systems integrated support for full disk encryption and virtual disk images.  Some have theorized the developers made this announcement because the encryption keys had been compromised or a “back door” had been created in response to a confidential demand from a law-enforcement or national security entity.  See Dan Goodin, Bombshell TrueCrypt Advisory: Backdoor? Hack? Hoax? None of the Above?, Ars Technica (May 29, 2014, 2:45 PM), http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/05/bombshell-truecrypt-advisory-backdoor-hack-hoax-none-of-the-above/, archived at http://perma.cc/JCE2-4AQJ.

[38] See, e.g., Hector Salcedo, Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and iCloud reach the Top 5 Cloud Storage Security Breaches List, Credeon Blog (Nov. 20, 2014, 7:00 AM), http://psg.hitachi-solutions.com/credeon/blog/google-drive-dropbox-box-and-icloud-reach-the-top-5-cloud-storage-security-breaches-list, archived at http://perma.cc/36CD-3FJV.

[39] See Andy Greenberg, The Unpatchable Malware that Infects USBs Is Now on the Loose, Wired (Oct. 2, 2014, 6:30 AM), http://www.wired.com/2014/10/code-published-for-unfixable-usb-attack, archived at http://perma.cc/V345-33WD.

[40] See id. The author’s firm now has a “no thumb drive” policy because the USB attack code is public and the stakes are too high if a firm device becomes infected—the malware cannot be removed even if the USB drive is wiped and reformatted.  See id.

[41] See Caroline Baldwin, USB-Connected Devices Present Cyber Vulnerabilities, Computer Wkly. (Aug. 11, 2014, 11:45 AM), http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240226605/USB-connected-devices-present-cyber-vulnerabilities, archived at http://perma.cc/8JW6-P2T9.

[42] See id.

[43] See Malware (Viruses et al), Info. Tech.–Miller Sch. Med. U. Miami, http://it.med.miami.edu/x699.xml, archived at http://perma.cc/8HYT-XD6B (last visited Jan. 28, 2015).

[44] See Jeff Beard, Wireless Networking Best Practices: Version 2.0, Law Tech Guru (Aug. 1, 2004), http://www.lawtechguru.com/archives/mobile_tech_gadgets.html, archived at http://perma.cc/KJ6Q-5JWD.

[45] Whether using Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) 128-bit or WPA encryption, your IT personnel should make sure that all communications are secure.  WEP is weaker and can be cracked.  See Vangie Beal, The Differences Between WEP and WPA, Webopedia (June 15, 2007), http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Computer_Science/WEP_WPA_wireless_security.asp, archived at http://perma.cc/TX4L-6ZTE.  The only wireless encryption standards that have not been cracked (yet) are WPA with the AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) or WPA2.  See Jason Fitzpatrick, HTG Explains: The Difference Between WEP, WPA, and WPA2 Wireless Encryption (and Why It Matters), How-To Geek (July 16, 2013), http://www.howtogeek.com/167783/htg-explains-the-difference-between-wep-wpa-and-wpa2-wireless-encryption-and-why-it-matters/, archived at http://perma.cc/Y3PP-RX88.

[46] Rick Lehtinen, Deborah Russell & G.T. Gangemi Sr., Computer Security Basics 119 (2d ed. 2006).

[47] See IBM Knowledge Center, File Transfer Protocol (FTP), IBM (last visited Feb. 18, 2015), http://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSB23S_1.1.0.8/com.ibm.ztpf-ztpfdf.doc_put.08/gtpc1/hftp.html?lang=en, archived at http://perma.cc/EX7T-SWN9.

[48] See Sherilyn Pastor & Kelly Lloyd, When Your Data Goes Viral: Insurance for Data Breaches, Corporate Counsel (Jan. 29, 2015), http://www.corpcounsel.com/id=1202716324082/When-Your-Data-Goes-Viral-Insurance-for-Data-Breaches?slreturn=20150118121934, archived at  http://perma.cc/HQ4M-JAXZ.

[49] See Doug Gross, Facebook Speaks out against Employers Asking for Passwords, CNN (last updated Mar. 23, 2012), http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/23/tech/social-media/facebook-employers/, archived at http://perma.cc/9BP2-SJG7.

[50] 18 U.S.C. § 2701(a)(1) (2012).

[51] 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(1)–(2) (2012); see also Eric Matusewitch, Your Facebook Password or Your Job?, NNRC (July 18, 2014), http://blog.nnrc.com/your-facebook-password-or-your-job/, archived at http://perma.cc/8DP3-DEWN.

[52] See 18 U.S.C. § 2707(a)–(b) (2012) (“any provider of electronic communication service, subscriber, or other person aggrieved” by a knowing or intentional violation may recover damages or an injunction in a civil action as well as reasonable attorneys fees); 18 U.S.C. § 1030(g) (2012) (‘‘Any person who suffers damage or loss by reason of a violation of this section may maintain a civil action against the violator to obtain compensatory damages and injunctive relief or other equitable relief.”).

[53] See Richard Kissel et al., Nat’l Inst. of Standards & Tech., U.S. Dep’t of Commerce, NIST Special Publication 800-88: Guidelines for Media Sanitization 27–28 (rev. 1 Dec. 2014), available at http://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/SpecialPublications/NIST.SP.800-88r1.pdf, archived at http://perma.cc/9MP7-UQVN (relating to secure reuse of hardware after data deletion and disposal of electronic information).  The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is responsible for developing information security standards and guidelines, including minimum standards for Federal information systems.  Id. at ii.

[54] See id. at 36–37.

[55] See ARMA Int’l, Generally Accepted Recordkeeping Principles: Information Governance Maturity Model (2013), available at http://www.arma.org/docs/bookstore/theprinciplesmaturitymodel.pdf, archived at http://perma.cc/8Q9F-PFEF; see also Cohasset Assocs., ARMA Int’l, 2013–2014 Information Governance Benchmarking Survey for Legal Services 6–7, available at http://www.arma.org/r1/news/2014/06/16/2013-2014-information-governance-benchmarking-survey-for-legal-service, archived at http://perma.cc/J4MG-WLS5.

[56] See, e.g., Abby Shagin, The Risks and Benefits of Cloud Computing, SAP Bus. Innovation (Oct. 25, 2012), http://blogs.sap.com/innovation/cloud-computing/risks-and-benefits-of-cloud-computing-020025, archived at http://perma.cc/4GHW-NEAX.

[57] See, e.g., Eric Griffith, What is Cloud Computing?, PC Mag (Mar. 13, 2013), http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2372163,00.asp, archived at http://perma.cc/7R6H-8J9A.

[58] See Joe McKendrick, 9 Questions to Ask Before Signing a Cloud Computing Contract, Forbes (Jan. 14, 2013, 4:00 AM), http://www.forbes.com/sites/joemckendrick/2013/01/14/9-questions-to-ask-before-signing-a-cloud-computing-contract/, archived at http://perma.cc/6BYB-3Q83.

[59] See Cloud Ethics Opinions Around the U.S., A.B.A., http://www.americanbar.org/groups/departments_offices/legal_technology_resources/resources/charts_fyis/cloud-ethics-chart.html, archived at http://perma.cc/JN7T-L3YJ (last visited Jan. 27, 2015) (collection of ethics opinions around the United States that deal with questions regarding law firms’ use of cloud computing).

[60] See id.

[61] See Complaint at 1–2, Zynga Inc. v. Alan Patmore, No. CGC-12-525099 (Cal. Super. Ct. Oct. 12, 2012) (a former employee transferred 760 confidential Zynga files to his personal account then uninstalled Dropbox to cover his tracks), available at http://tsi.brooklaw.edu/sites/tsi.brooklaw.edu/files/filings/zynga-inc-v-alan-patmore-et-al/20121012complaint-zynga.pdf, archived at http://perma.cc/MFQ3-SRXD.

[62] See Daniel P. Dern, How to Keep Your Smartphone (and It’s Data) Secure, Computerworld (Apr. 22, 2014, 7:30 AM), http://www.computerworld.com/article/2488450/mobile-security/how-to-keep-your-smartphone–and-its-data–secure.html, archived at http://perma.cc/AP2Q-932Q.

[63] See id.

[64] See id.

[65] See, e.g., Rolfe Winkler & Elizabeth Dwoskin, Google’s New User Tracking Bridges Mobile Apps and Mobile Web, Wall St. J. (Aug. 7, 2014, 7:57 PM), http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/08/07/googles-new-user-tracking-bridges-mobile-apps-and-mobile-web/, archived at http://perma.cc/2G2U-3EGH.

[66] See Zack Whittaker, Seven Privacy Settings You Should Change Immediately in iOS 8, ZDNet (Sept. 17, 2014, 2:30 PM), http://www.zdnet.com/article/seven-privacy-settings-you-should-change-immediately-in-ios-8/, archived at http://perma.cc/F4V5-9M8B; see also Klint Finley, Out in the Open: How to Protect Your Secrets from Nosey Android Apps, Wired (Mar. 31, 2014, 6:31 PM), http://www.wired.com/2014/03/x-privacy/, archived at http://perma.cc/RPZ2-TN3R.

[67] See, e.g., James Geddes, Flashlight Apps are Spying on Users Android, iOs, Windows Phone Smartphones, is Yours on the List?, Tech Times (Oct. 26, 2014, 7:36 AM), http://www.techtimes.com/articles/18762/20141026/flashlight-apps-are-spying-on-users-android-ios-windows-phone-smartphones-is-yours-on-the-list.htm, archived at http://perma.cc/4SEQ-EKA3.

[68] See Kia Kokalitcheva, Twitter Will Soon Track the Apps on Your Smartphone to Deliver More Targeted Ads, VentureBeat (Nov. 26, 2014, 10:09 AM), http://venturebeat.com/2014/11/26/twitter-will-soon-track-the-apps-on-your-smartphone-to-deliver-more-targeted-ads/, archived at http://perma.cc/83VE-QNJW.

[69] See Waqas, Flashlight Apps Stealing Personal Information Stored on Your Smartphone, HackRead (Oct. 27, 2014), http://hackread.com/flashlight-apps-stealing-your-personal-information/, archived at http://perma.cc/C7G2-48GX.

[70] See, e.g., Dan Lamothe, U.S. Military Social Media Accounts Apparently Hacked by Islamic State Sympathizers, Wash. Post, Jan. 12, 2015, available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2015/01/12/centcom-twitter-account-apparently-hacked-by-islamic-state-sympathizers/?Post+generic=%3Ftid%3Dsm_twitter_washingtonpost, archived at http://perma.cc/94LC-AM6V.

[71] See Matthew J. Schwartz, How to Hack Facebook in 60 Seconds, InformationWeek (June 28, 2013, 11:08 AM), http://www.informationweek.com/mobile/how-to-hack-facebook-in-60-seconds/d/d-id/1110576?, archived at http://perma.cc/G8N2-ZUPE; see also Fred Stutzman, Ralph Gross & Alessandro Acquiti, Silent Listeners: The Evolution of Privacy and Disclosure on Facebook, 4 J. Privacy & Confidentiality, no. 2, 2012, at 7, 7.

[72] See Breaking the Law, supra note 29 (noting that social media engineering is an effective method for hacking law firms when employees click on links in social media postings with messages aimed at persuading them to access the link).
[73] See Michael Kassner, Convenience or Security: You Can’t Have Both When it Comes to Wi-Fi, Tech Republic (June 24, 2013, 1:09 AM), http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/it-security/convenience-or-security-you-cant-have-both-when-it-comes-to-wi-fi/, archived at http://perma.cc/4BEX-P8H6.

[74] See Press Release, Kaspersky Lab, Kaspersky Lab Sheds Light on “Darkhotel,” Where Business Executives Fall Prey to an Elite Spying Crew (Nov. 10, 2014), available at http://usa.kaspersky.com/about-us/press-center/press-releases/kaspersky-lab-sheds-light-“darkhotel”-where-business-executives, archived at http://perma.cc/PH46-Y7LK.

[75] See, e.g., Eric Geier, Here’s What an Eavesdropper Sees When You Use an Unsecured Wi-Fi Hotspot, PC World (June 28, 2013, 5:35 AM), http://www.pcworld.com/article/2043095/heres-what-an-eavesdropper-sees-when-you-use-an-unsecured-wi-fi-hotspot.html, archived at http://perma.cc/33BF-ZFUV.

[76] See Wi-Fi Hotspots: Connecting While Traveling, Norton, http://us.norton.com/travel-hotspot-security/article, archived at http://perma.cc/A6Y5-T4AD (last visited Feb. 18, 2014).

[77] See, e.g., Erase Hard Disk Wipe Parameters, KillDisk, http://www.killdisk.com/notes.htm, (last visited Mar. 5, 2015) (describing the U.S. Department of Defense DoD 5220.22-M (ECE), a seven pass overwriting algorithm used to erase data).

[78] See Armen Keteyian, Digital Photocopiers Loaded with Secrets, CBS News (Apr. 19, 2010, 6:12 PM), http://www.cbsnews.com/news/digital-photocopiers-loaded-with-secrets/, archived at http://perma.cc/GVD6-7H8E.

The New ESI Sanctions Framework Under the Proposed Rule 37(e) Amendments

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Cite as: Philip J. Favro, The New ESI Sanctions Framework under the Proposed Rule 37(e) Amendments, 21 Rich. J.L. & Tech. 8 (2015), http://jolt.richmond.edu/v21i3/article8.pdf.

 by Philip J. Favro*

I.  Introduction

[1]       The debate over the necessity, substance, and form of the proposed e-Discovery amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (Rules) has been ongoing for over four years.[1]  Since the Duke Conference convened in May 2010, the Judicial Conference Advisory Committee on the Civil Rules (Committee) has been working to address many of the perceived shortcomings in the current Rules regime.[2]  Their efforts have not been conducted in a vacuum.  Interest groups representing parties on either side of the “v” in litigation, the U.S. Department of Justice, and even individual federal judges have lobbied the Committee in an effort to shape the final form of the proposed amendments.[3]  This process, while both lengthy and necessary, may be reaching its closing stages.  With the Judicial Conference of the United States having approved the Rules amendment package in September 2014, the proposed changes appear to be on track for implementation by December 1, 2015.[4]

[2]      Viewed holistically, the proposed changes are designed to usher in a new era of proportional discovery, increased cooperation, reduced gamesmanship, and more active judicial case management.[5]  For many litigants the amendments of greatest significance are those affecting Rule 37(e).[6]  If enacted, the changes to Rule 37(e) would provide a uniform national standard regarding the issuance of severe sanctions to address spoliation of electronically stored information (ESI).[7]  They would also introduce a new framework for determining whether sanctions of any nature should be imposed for ESI preservation shortcomings.[8]  Counsel, clients, and the courts should all be aware of the impact these changes could have in litigation and on client information governance programs.[9]

[3]      In this article, I will analyze these issues.  After covering the deficiencies with the current version of Rule 37(e) in Part II, I consider in Part III the new sanctions framework under the proposed amendments.  This includes an analysis of the factors parties would be required to satisfy in order to justify the imposition of sanctions.  I also describe the severe measures calculated to remediate the most harmful ESI preservation failures, along with lesser sanctions designed to cure prejudice stemming from less egregious forms of spoliation.  In Part IV, I focus on some key questions about the Rule 37(e) revisions that remain unanswered and that will likely be resolved only by motion practice.  This includes, among other things, a discussion of how a revised Rule 37(e) might apply to failures to preserve ESI stored with cloud computing providers.

II.  The Need for Revisions to Rule 37(e)

[4]      The Committee has spent countless hours considering the over-preservation of ESI and the appropriate standard of culpability required to impose sanctions for its spoliation.[10]  Even though the current iteration of Rule 37(e) is supposed to provide guidance on these issues, amendments were deemed necessary given the inherent limitations with the rule.[11]

[5]      As it stands, Rule 37(e) safeguards litigants from discovery sanctions when the good faith, programmed operation of their computer systems automatically eliminates ESI.[12]  Nevertheless, the rule has largely proved ineffective as a national standard.[13]  While there are many reasons that could explain its futility, three problems predominate in the present version of the rule.

[6]      First, Rule 37(e) did not expressly abrogate the negligence standard that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit implemented for severe sanctions involving preservation failures under Residential Funding Corp. v. DeGeorge Financial Corp.[14]  By allowing Residential Funding to remain in effect, courts in the Second Circuit and beyond are free to impose adverse inference instructions or order other doomsday sanctions for negligent spoliation of ESI.[15]  With the Second Circuit—one of the epicenters of U.S. litigation—following a sanctions touchstone that generally varies from the rest of the country, the rule has failed to become a uniform national standard for ESI sanctions.[16]

[7]      The second reason Rule 37(e) has failed as a so-called “safe harbor” from sanctions is the emphasis the 2006 Committee note placed on requiring litigants to stop the routine destruction of ESI once a preservation duty attached.[17]  While litigants may be required to suspend particular aspects of their electronic information systems once a preservation duty is triggered, this is not the exclusive or the determinative factor in every sanctions analysis.[18]  For instance—as U.S. District Judge Paul Grimm emphasized in Victor Stanley, Inc. v. Creative Pipe, Inc.—a court should also consider as part of that analysis the “reasonableness and proportionality” of a party’s efforts to preserve relevant ESI.[19]  Nevertheless, most courts applying Rule 37(e) have instead generally focused on whether and when a party suspended particular aspects of its computer systems after a preservation duty attached.[20]  This has led to sanctions rulings that are out of step with mainline ESI preservation jurisprudence.[21]

[8]      The third factor contributing to the futility of Rule 37(e) is that courts have frequently used their inherent authority to bypass the rule’s protections.[22]  This is because Rule 37(e) only applies to conduct that occurred during the litigation.[23]  It does not govern pre-litigation activities such as the destruction of ESI that occurred before the commencement of litigation.[24]  As a result, courts have often wielded their inherent powers to fashion remedies for ESI destruction free from the rule’s present constraints.[25]

[9]      With varying preservation standards, the inordinate focus on one factor in the preservation analysis, and the ease with which the rule’s protections can be bypassed, there can be little doubt as to why a revised version of Rule 37(e) is needed.

III.  The Proposed Rule 37(e) Amendments

[10]      The proposed amendments to Rule 37(e) are designed to address these issues by providing a straightforward framework for the issuance of any sanctions stemming from failures to preserve relevant ESI.[26]  They also encourage courts to draw on a wide range of factors to fashion sanctions awards that cure prejudice caused by less harmful forms of ESI spoliation.[27]  In addition, the proposed changes establish “a uniform standard in federal court” for the imposition of severe remedial measures resulting from ESI preservation failures.[28]

A.  The New Sanctions Framework

[11]      The Committee has established a set of requirements in the proposed rule that must be satisfied before a court could impose sanctions on a litigant for failing to preserve ESI.[29]  The reason for doing so is to ensure sanctions for preservation failures are based on the designated criteria and not the potentially arbitrary use of a court’s inherent powers:

New Rule 37(e) . . . . authorizes and specifies measures a court may employ if information that should have been preserved is lost, and specifies the findings necessary to justify these measures.  It therefore forecloses reliance on inherent authority or state law to determine whether measures should be used.[30]

[12]      The prerequisites a party must satisfy when moving for sanctions under the amended Rule 37(e) proposal are as follows:

1. Relevant ESI “should have been preserved in the anticipation or conduct of litigation,”

2. Relevant ESI was “lost,”

3. The party charged with safeguarding the lost ESI “failed to take reasonable steps to preserve” the information, and

4. The lost ESI “cannot be restored or replaced through additional discovery.”[31]

[13]      While the first two steps essentially reflect existing common law requirements,[32] the third step includes a key notion memorialized in Victor Stanley II and Rimkus Consulting Group, Inc. v. Cammarata: preservation efforts must be analyzed through the lens of reasonableness.[33]  This is a significant step since it would oblige courts to examine preservation issues with a broader perspective and not focus exclusively on whether and when the party modified aspects of its electronic information systems.[34]  Moreover, it would direct preservation questions away from a mythical standard of perfection that has unwittingly crept into discovery jurisprudence over the past several years.[35]  Instead of punishing parties that somehow failed to preserve every last e-mail that could conceivably be relevant, the rule would essentially require a common sense determination of the issues based on a benchmark—reasonableness—with which courts and counsel are familiar.[36]

[14]      The fourth and final provision is significant since it would prevent the imposition of sanctions where there is essentially no harm to the moving party given the availability of replacement evidence.[37]

B.  Severe Sanctions vs. Curative Measures

[15]      To obtain the most severe measures under Rule 37(e)(2), the moving party must additionally demonstrate that the alleged spoliator “acted with the intent to deprive another party of the information’s use in the litigation.”[38]  This specific intent requirement is designed to create a uniform national standard by ensuring severe sanctions are imposed only for the most flagrant violations of ESI preservation duties.[39]  These violations appear to include bad faith destructions of ESI that occur in connection with the instant lawsuit.[40]  They do not, however, include negligent or grossly negligent conduct.[41]  The draft Committee note makes clear that the Rule 37(e) amendments “reject[] cases such as Residential Funding Corp. v. DeGeorge Financial Corp., 306 F.3d 99 (2nd Cir. 2002), that authorize the giving of adverse-inference instructions on a finding of negligence or gross negligence.”[42]

[16]      The severe sanctions a court could issue under Rule 37(e)(2) are limited to dismissing the case, entering default judgment, or “instruct[ing] the jury that it may or must presume the information was unfavorable to the party.”[43]  Alternatively, a court could presume that the lost ESI was unfavorable to the alleged spoliator.[44]  Nevertheless, a court is under no obligation to order any of these measures even if the specific intent requirement is satisfied.[45]  As the Committee cautions in the draft note, “[t]he remedy should fit the wrong, and the severe measures authorized . . . should not be used when the information lost was relatively unimportant or lesser measures . . . would be sufficient to redress the loss.”[46]

[17]      If the moving party cannot satisfy the specific “intent to deprive” requirement, the court could then resort to curative measures under Rule 37(e)(1) to address prejudice resulting from the loss of the ESI.[47]  The sanctions a court could order pursuant to that provision would be “no greater than necessary to cure the prejudice” to the aggrieved party.[48]  That wording was drafted broadly to ensure that jurists would have sufficient discretion to craft remedies that could ameliorate the prejudice.[49]  While the precise range of these remedies is not delineated in the rule, a Committee report and the draft Committee note suggest the remedies could include the following:

•         “[P]reclude a party from presenting evidence,”[50]

•         “[D]eem some facts as having been established,” [51]

•         “[P]ermit the parties to present evidence and argument to the jury regarding the loss of information,”[52]

•         “[G]ive the jury instructions to assist in its  evaluation of such evidence or argument, other than instructions to which subdivision (e)(2) applies,”[53] or

•         “[E]xclude a specific item of evidence to offset prejudice caused by failure to preserve other evidence that might contradict the excluded item of evidence.”[54]

[18]      Thus, a moving party could very well obtain weighty penalties against an alleged spoliator even if it is unable to establish the specific intent to deprive.[55]  Nevertheless, the draft Committee note establishes that any such sanctions must be tailored so they do not equal or exceed the severe measures of Rule 37(e)(2).[56]

IV.  Key Issues for Motion Practice under the New Rule 37(e)

[19]      While the new Rule 37(e) proposal addresses the main problems associated with the current rule, there are several questions about the revised rule that remain unanswered and will likely be the subject of vigorous motion practice.  I will consider three of those questions in this section.

A.  What Are “Reasonable Steps to Preserve” ESI?

[20]      One of the principal battlegrounds under the revised version of Rule 37(e) will certainly involve deciphering the meaning of “reasonable steps to preserve” ESI.[57]  This is because the “reasonable steps” provision is an express—though undefined—prerequisite for obtaining sanctions.[58]  This is confirmed by the wording of the draft Committee note: “Because the rule calls only for reasonable steps to preserve, it is inapplicable when the loss of information occurs despite the party’s reasonable steps to preserve.”[59]  Thus, a party who employs “reasonable steps” to keep relevant ESI cannot be sanctioned for its loss.[60]

[21]      However, as to the precise meaning of “reasonable steps,” the Committee provides only general guidance.  For example, the draft note suggests sanctions may not be appropriate if the destroyed ESI is either outside of a preserving party’s control or has been wiped out by circumstances (e.g., flood, fire, hackers, viruses, etc.) beyond the party’s control.[61]  Nevertheless, the note does not suggest these force majeure circumstances are an absolute defense to a sanctions request.[62]  Instead, it advises courts to view the context of the destruction and what steps the preserving party could reasonably have taken to prepare for the problem before it occurred.[63]  However, the Committee acknowledges that engaging in this type of hindsight analysis has its limitations.[64]

[22]      The note also suggests that the range of a party’s preservation efforts should be tempered by proportionality standards.[65]  However, as U.S. Magistrate Judge James Francis observed in Orbit One Communications, Inc. v. Numerex Corp., proportionality is an “amorphous” and “highly elastic” concept that may not “create a safe harbor for a party that is obligated to preserve evidence.”[66]  Therefore, while notions of proportionality may factor into the preservation analysis, it is unlikely they alone will determine the issue of “reasonable steps to preserve.”[67]

[23]      In the absence of meaningful direction on this issue, courts will likely turn to existing case law to help guide their decision on whether a party has taken “reasonable steps” to retain ESI.[68]  To be sure, the jurisprudence on this issue is far from uniform.[69]  Nevertheless, there are many cases that delineate the acceptable boundaries of preservation conduct.[70]  How those cases are applied under the revised Rule 37(e) will turn—as they always have—on the facts of the case,[71] the quality of counsel’s advocacy,[72] and the court’s perception of the issues.[73]

B.  What Does “Intent to Deprive” Mean?

[24]      Another likely area of dispute between litigants will be on the meaning of the “intent to deprive” requirement of revised Rule 37(e)(2).[74]  While the draft Committee note makes clear that this specific intent requirement does not include negligent or grossly negligent conduct,[75] the question confronting clients, counsel, and the courts is what conduct does it refer to?

[25]      The Committee report issued in connection with the Rule 37(e) proposed amendments explains that the “intent requirement is akin to bad faith.”[76]  Despite this straightforward explanation, the draft Committee note does not take such a restrictive view.[77]  Instead, the note indicates that sanctions under Rule 37(e)(2) are limited “to instances of intentional loss or destruction.”[78]  Conduct that is “intentional” and which results in the spoliation of ESI is not necessarily tantamount to bad faith.[79]  Indeed, that intentional conduct is a lesser standard than bad faith was confirmed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit many years ago.[80]  In addressing a document spoliation question, the Seventh Circuit noted the distinction between bad faith and intentional conduct: “[t]hat the documents were destroyed intentionally no one can doubt, but ‘bad faith’ means destruction for the purpose of hiding adverse information.”[81]

[26]      If the “intent to deprive” requirement does encompass lesser forms of ESI spoliation than bad faith, the question then becomes what is the level of conduct punishable under Rule 37(e)(2)?  The answer is that “intentional” spoliations may very well include instances where parties have been reckless or willful in their destructions of ESI.[82]  Whether that conduct is sufficient to justify the severe measures that a revised Rule 37(e) authorizes will once again turn on the nature and circumstances surrounding the spoliation.[83]  In other words, the courts will again be left to sort out the meaning of a key provision from the rule.[84]

C.  How Would Rule 37(e) Apply to Cloud Computing Preservation Failures?

[27]      A third unanswered question is how the revised Rule 37(e) might apply in the context of cloud computing.  This is a particularly significant issue given that many organizations and individuals have moved or will move their data to cloud-based storage platforms.[85]  Even though petabytes of data are now being stored in the cloud, there are few lawyers who possess the expertise or understanding required to preserve and produce that data in discovery.[86]  These factors suggest cloud-related ESI preservation breakdowns should be expected in the coming years.[87]  Given these circumstances, how should courts address cloud preservation breakdowns under the amended Rule?

[28]      One recent case that provides some insight into the issues is Brown v. Tellermate Holdings.[88]  In Brown, the court imposed an issue preclusion sanction on the defendant employer for failing to preserve relevant information stored in the cloud.[89]  The plaintiffs had sought various categories of data from their former employer in order to substantiate their age discrimination claims.[90]  In particular, the plaintiffs—who previously worked as sales representatives at the company—requested their former employer produce sales records maintained by the employer on cloud provider Salesforce.com to establish that they either met or exceeded their sales quotas in comparison to younger employees.[91]

[29]      While the employer’s counsel issued a “general directive” that relevant documents be kept for litigation, neither the employer nor its lawyers took meaningful follow-up steps to ensure the responsive cloud-stored data was preserved.[92]  For example, the employer did not export the requested data from Salesforce.com and neglected to back up that information.[93]  Nor did the employer keep the plaintiffs’ Salesforce.com account information.[94]  Instead, it repurposed these accounts, thereby enabling other employees to modify or revise the data.[95]  Finally, the employer did not ask Salesforce.com for a back-up of the requested account data until after the cloud provider recycled the data pursuant to its own retention schedule.[96]  All of which compromised and spoliated the requested information that ultimately could have established (or negated) the plaintiffs’ claims.[97]

[30]      Would a revised Rule 37(e) change the outcome in Brown?  The employer almost certainly would not have escaped sanctions under the amended Rule since it “failed to take reasonable steps to preserve” [98] the relevant Salesforce.com ESI and due to the lack of replacement evidence.[99]  Given the importance of the spoliated evidence to the plaintiffs’ claims and the court’s other findings on the issues,[100] the issue preclusion sanction would likely be an appropriate curative measure under the updated version of Rule 37(e)(1).[101]

[31]      Indeed, the new sanctions framework suggests the only change in Brown might be in the gravity of the sanction issued against the employer.

Was the employer’s preservation failure tantamount to an “intent to deprive”[102] the plaintiffs of the Salesforce.com ESI under amended Rule 37(e)(2)?  While the employer unquestionably allowed the ESI to be destroyed, its conduct seems more akin to recklessness than bad faith,[103] i.e., the purposeful concealment of adverse information.[104]  And yet, given the ambiguity created by the draft committee note, such reckless conduct arguably could satisfy the “intentional loss or destruction” language.[105]

[32]      Though impossible to predict how a court would precisely rule in this instance, it is clear that the new sanctions framework would not dramatically change the analysis of the matter.  In essence, courts will continue to adjudicate ESI preservation failures—regardless of whether they occur in the cloud or in more conventional storage locations—based on the traditional notions of reasonableness and proportionality.[106]

V.  Conclusion

[33]      While not every issue associated with ESI preservation failures has been addressed by the Rule 37(e) proposal, it is unrealistic to expect that any rule could do so.  Moreover, the revised rule appears to have resolved many of the shortcomings with the current version.  By creating a basic analytical framework, widening the analysis to ensure a broad set of factors are considered in connection with preservation conduct, and establishing a uniform standard for severe sanctions, lawyers may finally have a workable paradigm to provide straightforward advice to clients on ESI preservation questions.


* Philip Favro is Senior Discovery Counsel, Recommind, Inc.; J.D., Santa Clara University School of Law, 1999; B.A., Political Science, Brigham Young University, 1994.  An earlier version of this article was first published by the Electronic Discovery & Digital Evidence Journal of the American Bar Association.  Philip Favro, The New ESI Sanctions Framework Under The Proposed Rule 37(e) Amendments, EDDE J., Summer 2014, at 12–19, available at http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCAQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fapps.americanbar.org%2Fdch%2Fthedl.cfm%3Ffilename%3D%2FST203001%2Frelatedresources%2FEDDE_JOURNAL-volume5_issue3.pdf&ei=pzKPVPeVA9KpogTR9oCoDA&usg=AFQjCNHpsxbsPwzvNEQ7Ku–x8m3x3oydw&sig2=gSNo1bbZeqtfCyHf2A2j0g&bvm=bv.81828268,d.cGU, archived at http://perma.cc/JKJ9-R6RY.

[1] See Judicial Conference Comm. on Rules of Practice & Procedure, Report of the Judicial Conference Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure 13–14, app. B-1 to B-2 (Sept. 2014) [hereinafter Sept. ‘14 Report], available at http://www.uscourts.gov/uscourts/RulesAndPolicies/rules/Reports/ST09-2014.pdf, archived at http://perma.cc/S4YH-RF9T.

[2] Id. at 13–14, app. B-2.

[3] See generally Judicial Conference Advisory Comm. on Civil Rules, Report of Advisory Committee on Civil Rules 95-305, 331-411 (May 2, 2014) [hereinafter May ’14 Report], available at http://www.uscourts.gov/uscourts/RulesAndPolicies/rules/Agenda%20Books/Standing/ST2014-05.pdf, archived at http://perma.cc/6UFS-XLFQ (summarizing the nature of the comments the Committee received on the published versions of the proposed Rules amendments).

[4] See Thomas Y. Allman, The Civil Rules Package as Approved by the Judicial Conference (Sept. 18, 2014), available at http://www.theediscoveryblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/2014CommentsonRulePackage.pdf, archived at http://perma.cc/QVF2-GPD4 (discussing the timetable for approving and enacting the Rule amendments).

[5] See Philip J. Favro, A Comprehensive Look at the Newly Proposed Amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, 26 Utah Bar J. 38, 38–41 (2013).

[6] See Raymond M. Ripple & Krystle Guillory Tadesse, Proposed Amendment to FRCP Rule 37 Addresses Sanctions for Failure to Preserve ESI, Inside Counsel (May 21, 2014), http://www.insidecounsel.com/2014/05/21/proposed-amendment-to-frcp-rule-37-addresses-sanct, archived at http://perma.cc/8BA6-BCY9.

[7] See Favro, supra note 5, at 42.

[8] See Sept. ‘14 Report, supra note 1, at app. B-59 to B-62.

[9] See Philip J. Favro, Getting Serious: Why Companies Must Adopt Information Governance Measures to Prepare for the Upcoming Changes to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, 20 Rich. J. L. & Tech. 5, ¶¶ 32–36 (2014) [hereinafter Getting Serious], http://jolt.richmond.edu/v20i2/article5.pdf, archived at http://perma.cc/LUN9-T76D.

[10] See Sept. ‘14 Report, supra note 1, at app. B-14 to B-15.

[11] Id. at app. B-58.

[12] Getting Serious, supra note 9, at ¶ 27.

[13] See Sept. ‘14 Report, supra note 1, at app. B-58; see also Hawley v. Mphasis Corp., 302 F.R.D. 37, 47, n.4 (S.D.N.Y. 2014) (describing that the purpose of the amendments is “to replace the disparate treatment of preservation/sanctions issues in different circuits by adopting a single standard”).

[14] Residential Funding Corp. v. DeGeorge Financial Corp., 306 F.3d 99, 113 (2d Cir. 2002); see also Sept. ‘14 Report, supra note 1, at app. B-17 to B-18, B-65.

[15] See, e.g., Sekisui Am. Corp. v. Hart, 945 F. Supp. 2d 494, 502–03 (S.D.N.Y. 2013) (relying on Residential Funding to impose an adverse inference instruction as a sanction for the plaintiffs’ grossly negligent spoliation of ESI).

[16] See Philip J. Favro, Sea Change or Status Quo: Has the Rule 37(e) Safe Harbor Advanced Best Practices for Information Management?, 11 Minn. J.L. Sci. & Tech. 317, 328–29, 332 (2010) [hereinafter Sea Change] (discussing the Committee’s intent to establish the present version of Rule 37(e) as a national standard when it was implemented in 2006).  The Second Circuit’s negligence standard is increasingly viewed as an anachronistic rule given the current challenges associated with ESI preservation.  See Sept. ‘14 Report, supra note 1, at app. B-18 (observing, among other things, that because “ESI is more easily lost than tangible evidence, . . . the sanction of an adverse inference instruction imposes a heavy penalty for losses that are likely to become increasingly frequent as ESI multiplies”).

[17] See Sea Change, supra note 16, at 327–28.

[18] Victor Stanley, Inc. v. Creative Pipe, Inc. (Victor Stanley II), 269 F.R.D. 497, 523 (D. Md. 2010).

[19] Id. (observing that an “assessment of reasonableness and proportionality should be at the forefront of all inquiries into whether a party has fulfilled its duty to preserve relevant evidence”).

[20] See Sea Change, supra note 16, at 327–28.

[21] See, e.g., In re Actos (Pioglitazone) Prods. Liab. Litig., No. 6:11-md-2299, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 86101, at *219–20 (W.D. La. June 23, 2014) (issuing an adverse inference instruction against one of the defendants for its failure to preserve relevant ESI and holding that a general litigation hold issued in an unrelated products liability suit filed nine years earlier had given rise to a duty to preserve relevant ESI in the instant litigation); Phillip M. Adams & Assocs., L.L.C. v. Dell, Inc., 621 F. Supp. 2d 1173, 1191 (D. Utah 2009) (finding that industry-related litigation that was initiated years before the lawsuit was filed against the defendant should have “sensitized” the defendant to the reasonable anticipation of litigation and that its subsequent failure to preserve relevant ESI merited sanctions).

[22] Thomas Y. Allman, Dealing with Spoliation in the Federal Rules (Again): The Proposed Amendment to Rule 37(e) at 5, IAALS/NJC E-Discovery Summit 2013 (Sept. 19–20, 2013), available at http://iaals.du.edu/images/wygwam/documents/publications/E-Discovery_Panel_2_Preservation.pdf, archived at http://perma.cc/72GB-U82V.

[23] Nucor Corp. v. Bell, 251 F.R.D. 191, 196, n.3 (D.S.C. 2008); see also Rimkus Consulting Group, Inc. v. Cammarata, 688 F. Supp. 2d 598, 611–12 (S.D. Tex. 2010) (delineating the nature and scope of the court’s inherent authority to issue sanctions and its interplay with Rule 37(e)).

[24] Nucor, 251 F.R.D. at 196, n.3 (“Rule 37(e)’s plain language states that it only applies to sanctions imposed under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (e.g., a sanction made under Rule 37(b) for failing to obey a court order).  Thus, the rule is not applicable when the court sanctions a party pursuant to its inherent powers.”).

[25] See, e.g., id.; see also Escobar v. Houston, No. 04-1945, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 72706, at *51–52, n.5 (S.D. Tex. Sept. 29, 2007) (describing the circumstances under which courts may exercise their inherent authority).

[26] See Sept. ‘14 Report, supra note 1, at app. B-56 to B-57.

[27] See id. at app. B-63 to B-64.

[28] Id. at app. B-65.

[29] See id. at app. B-56 to B-57, B-61 to B-62.

[30] Id. at app. B-58 (emphasis added).

[31] Id. at app. B-56.

[32] See Sept. ‘14 Report, supra note 1, at app. B-59.

[33] Victor Stanley II, 269 F.R.D. 497, 523 (D. Md. 2010); Rimkus Consulting Group, Inc. v. Cammarata, 688 F. Supp. 2d 598, 613 (S.D. Tex. 2010) (observing that reasonableness is the touchstone of the preservation analysis); see also Sept. ‘14 Report, supra note 1, at app. B-59 to B-62.

[34] See Sept. ‘14 Report, supra note 1, at app. B-59 to B-62.

[35] See id. at app. B-61 (“This rule recognizes that ‘reasonable steps’ to preserve suffice; it does not call for perfection.”); Reinsdorf v. Skechers U.S.A., Inc., 296 F.R.D. 604, 615, 631 (C.D. Cal. 2013) (holding that the Rules “do not require perfection” and discussing related authorities).

[36] Rimkus, 688 F. Supp. 2d at 613.

[37] See Sept. ‘14 Report, supra note 1, at app. B-62 (“[i]f the information is restored or replaced, no further measures should be taken.”).

[38] Id. at app. B-56 to B-57.

[39] See id. at app. B-64 to B-65.

[40] See id. app. B-17 (“This intent requirement is akin to bad faith.”).

[41] See id. at app. B-65.

[42] Id.

[43] Sept. ‘14 Report, supra note 1, at app. B-56 to B-57.

[44] See id.

[45] See id. at app. B-67.

[46] Id.

[47] Id., at app. B-55 to B-57.

[48] Id.

[49] See Sept. ‘14 Report, supra note 1, at app. B-63 to B-64 (“The range of such measures is quite broad . . . [; m]uch is entrusted to the court’s discretion.”).

[50] May ‘14 Report, supra note 3, at 312.

[51] Id.

[52] Sept. ‘14 Report, supra note 1, at app. B-64.

[53] Id.

[54] Id.

[55] Id. at app. B-63 to B-64; see also May ‘14 Report, supra note 3, at 312.

[56] See Sept. ‘14 Report, supra note 1, at app. B-64 (“Care must be taken, however, to ensure that curative measures under subdivision (e)(1) do not have the effect of measures that are permitted under subdivision (e)(2) only on a finding of intent to deprive another party of the lost information’s use in the litigation.”).

[57] Id. at app. B-56.

[58] Id. at app. B-56, B-61.

[59] Id. at app. B-61.

[60] See id. (“Because the rule calls only for reasonable steps to preserve, it is inapplicable when the loss of information occurs despite the party’s reasonable steps to preserve.”).

[61] See id.

[62] See Sept. ‘14 Report, supra note 1, at app. B-61.

[63] See id. at app. B-61 to B-62 (“Courts may, however, need to assess the extent to which a party knew of and protected against such risks.”).

[64] See id. at app. B-59 (cautioning generally about the limited perspective that hindsight provides into the nature of a party’s conduct).

[65] See id. at app. B-61 to B-62; see also Philip J. Favro & Derek P. Pullan, New Utah Rule 26: A Blueprint for Proportionality Under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, 2012 Mich. St. L. Rev. 933, 952 (2012) (citing authorities holding that preservation efforts “must be viewed through the lens of proportionality” and not just the “kaleidoscope of relevance”).

[66] Orbit One Commc’ns, Inc. v. Numerex Corp., 271 F.R.D. 429, 436, n.10 (S.D.N.Y. 2010).

[67] See Pippins v. KPMG L.L.P., No. 11 Civ. 0377(CM)(JLC), 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 116427 (S.D.N.Y. Oct. 7, 2011), aff’d, 279 F.R.D. 245, 255–56 (S.D.N.Y. 2012) (rejecting the defendant’s proportionality-based argument because it failed to consider reasonable conditions upon its request to retain only excerpts of its preserved ESI).

[68] See Sea Change, supra note 16, at 334–39 (discussing various cases).

[69] Compare Stevenson v. Union Pac. R.R. Co., 354 F.3d 739, 746–48 (8th Cir. 2004) (holding an adverse inference instruction was appropriate given the defendant’s failure to suspend its 90-day audio recording retention policy, which resulted in the destruction of relevant evidence), with Morris v. Union Pac. R.R., 373 F.3d 896, 899–902 (8th Cir. 2004) (holding an adverse inference instruction was not proper despite the defendant’s failure to suspend its 90-day audio recording retention policy, which could have resulted in the destruction of relevant evidence).  See also Victor Stanley II, 269 F.R.D. 497, 523 (D. Md. 2010) (observing “in terms of what a party must do to preserve potentially relevant evidence, case law is not consistent across the circuits, or even within individual districts.”).

[70] See, e.g., Micron Tech., Inc. v. Rambus Inc., 645 F.3d 1311, 1322 (Fed. Cir. 2011) (approving information retention policies that eliminate documents for “good housekeeping” purposes); Brigham Young Univ. v. Pfizer, Inc., 282 F.R.D. 566, 572–73 (D. Utah 2012) (denying plaintiffs’ motion for sanctions since the evidence at issue was destroyed pursuant to defendants’ “good faith business procedures”).

[71] See, e.g., Rimkus Consulting Grp., Inc. v. Cammarata, 688 F. Supp. 2d 598, 613 (S.D. Tex. 2010) (explaining a preservation “analysis depends heavily on the facts and circumstances of each case and cannot be reduced to a generalized checklist of what is acceptable or unacceptable.”); see also Chin v. Port Auth. of N.Y. & N.J., 685 F.3d 135, 162 (2d Cir. 2012) (reasoning that a “case-by-case approach” is the preferred method for determining the appropriate remedial measures for failures to preserve relevant information).

[72] See, e.g., Mathis v. John Morden Buick, Inc., 136 F.3d 1153, 1155 (7th Cir. 1998) (affirming an order of judgment against the plaintiff despite the defendant’s destruction of relevant evidence and expressing “surprise” at the “perplexing failure” of the plaintiff’s counsel to formally move for discovery sanctions).

[73] See Sept. ‘14 Report, supra note 1, at app. B-59 to B-60.

[74] Id. at app. B-56 to B-57.

[75] Id. at app. B-65.

[76] Id. at app. B-17.

[77] See id. at app. B-65.

[78]  Id.

[79] See Micron Tech., Inc. v. Rambus Inc., 645 F.3d 1311, 1327 (Fed. Cir. 2011) (“In determining that a spoliator acted in bad faith, a district court must do more than state the conclusion of spoliation and note that the document destruction was intentional.”).

[80] See Mathis v. John Morden Buick, Inc., 136 F.3d 1153, 1155 (7th Cir. 1998) (explaining the differences between bad faith and intentional conduct in connection with a defendant’s destruction of relevant information).

[81] Id.

[82] See generally Pension Comm. of the Univ. of Montreal Pension Plan v. Banc of Am. Sec., LLC, 685 F. Supp. 2d 456, 463–65 (S.D.N.Y. 2010) (“willfulness involves intentional or reckless conduct that is so unreasonable that harm is highly likely to occur”).

[83] See Chin v. Port Auth. of N.Y. & N.J., 685 F.3d 135, 162 (2d Cir. 2012); see also Rimkus Consulting Group, Inc. v. Cammarata, 688 F. Supp. 2d 598, 613 (S.D. Tex. 2010).

[84] See generally Victor Stanley II, 269 F.R.D. 497 (D. Md. 2010) (discussing cases and the challenges associated with evidence preservation confronting courts and organizational litigants).

[85] See Ned Smith, Why More Businesses Are Using Cloud Computing, CNBC (July 25, 2012, 1:00 PM), http://www.cnbc.com/id/48319526/Why_More_Businesses_Are_Using_Cloud_Computing, archived at http://perma.cc/JB7Q-D2ES (“More than eight in 10 companies currently use some form of cloud solution, and more than half plan to increase cloud investments by 10 percent or more this year . . . [and] more than half of micro (one to nine employees) and small (10 to 99 employees) businesses use cloud-based business productivity applications.”); see also Nicole Black, Introduction, Global Cloud Survey Report 2012, Legal IT Professionals 4, 7, available at http://www.legalitprofessionals.com/wpcs/cloudsurvey2012.pdf, archived at http://perma.cc/HXK7-ZS2H (“[N]early all respondents acknowledged that cloud computing would ultimately overtake on-premise computing in the legal industry.”); Sept. ‘14 Report, supra note 1, at app. B-15.

[86] See Philip Favro, ‘Mind Over Matters: Q & A with eDiscovery and Litigation Guru Craig Ball, Recommind (Aug. 7, 2014), http://www.recommind.com/blog/q-ediscovery-litigation-guru-craig-ball, archived at http://perma.cc/4D7H-7ZTF (observing that most lawyers generally lack the training and are unprepared to “preserve and produce data stored with cloud providers, maintained on mobile devices, or exchanged on social networking sites”).

[87] See id.

[88] Brown v. Tellermate Holdings Ltd., No. 2:11-cv-1122, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 90123, *4–6, *27 (S.D. Ohio July 1, 2014).

[89] Id. at *72–74.

[90] Id. at *9–10, *70–71.

[91] Id.

[92] Id. at *56–58.

[93] Id. at *24–26.

[94] Brown, 2014 U.S. Dis. LEXIS 90123 at *21–23.

[95] Id.

[96] Id. at *57–58.

[97] See id. at *72–74.

[98] Sept. ‘14 Report, supra note 1, at app. B-56, B-60 to B-62.

[99] See Brown, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 90123, at *72–74.

[100] See id. at 66–74.

[101] See Sept. ‘14 Report, supra note 1, at app. B-55 to B-57, B-63 to B-64.

[102] Id. at app. B-55 to -57, B-64 to B-67.

[103] See Brown, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 90123, at *69–70.

[104] See Mathis v. John Morden Buick, Inc., 136 F.3d 1153, 1155 (7th Cir. 1998).

[105] See Sept. ‘14 Report, supra note 1, at app. B-65.

[106] This line of reasoning appears to be equally applicable to ESI preservation failures on mobile devices.  See Philip Favro, The Impact of Cloud Computing and Mobile Devices on Litigation Holds, Law Journal Newsletters (Jan. 2015), available at http://www.lawjournalnewsletters.com/issues/ljn_legaltech/31_9a/news/the_impact_of_cloud_computing_and_mobile_devices_on_litigation_holds160645-1.html, archived at http://perma.cc/MB8Z-FAQ8 (describing the preservation challenges associated with data stored on mobile devices).

 

The Internet of Things and Wearable Technology: Addressing Privacy and Security Concerns without Derailing Innovation

Merger and Acquisition Due Diligence: A Proposed Framework to Incorporate Data Privacy, Information Security, E-Discovery, and Information Governance into Due Diligence Practices

An Uneasy Balance: Personal Information and Crowdfunding Under the JOBS Act

Clapper v. Amnesty International and Data Privacy Litigation: Is a Change to the Law “Certainly Impending”?

The Reasonable Information Security Program

Riley v. California: The New Katz or Chimel?

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Cite as: Adam Lamparello & Charles MacLean, Riley v. California: The New Katz or Chimel?, 21 Rich. J.L. & Tech. 1 (2014), http://jolt.richmond.edu/v21i1/article1.pdf.

Adam Lamparello & Charles MacLean*

“To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means—to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal—would bring terrible retribution. Against that pernicious doctrine this Court should resolutely set its face.”[1]

I.  Introduction

[1]        In Olmstead v. United States,[2] Justice Louis Brandeis dissented from a 5–4 ruling that allowed law enforcement officers to obtain private wiretapped telephone conversations without a warrant and use them as evidence.[3] Justice Brandeis’ words foreshadowed the threats to civil liberties that technology would pose:

The progress of science in furnishing the Government with means of espionage is not likely to stop with wire-tapping. Ways may some day be developed by which the Government, without removing papers from secret drawers, can reproduce them in court, and by which it will be enabled to expose to a jury the most intimate occurrences of the home. Advances in the psychic and related sciences may bring means of exploring unexpressed beliefs, thoughts and emotions. “That places the liberty of every man in the hands of every petty officer” was said by James Otis of much lesser intrusions than these. To Lord Camden, a far slighter intrusion seemed “subversive of all the comforts of society.” Can it be that the Constitution affords no protection against such invasions of individual security?[4]

[2]        Over three-quarters of a century later, privacy is being attacked in a manner that threatens the liberty of every citizen. The Government is tracking the whereabouts of its citizens at any time of the day,[5] recording Internet search history[6] and data stored on a hard drive,[7] and monitoring messages sent by text message or e-mail.[8] As a result, some individuals may unknowingly be on a terror watch list for downloading a video that depicts Al Qaeda sympathizers burning an American flag and threatening an attack larger than September 11, 2001, when hijacked planes toppled New York City’s twin towers and took the lives of over 3000 people.[9] The most frightening aspect is that the Government is doing all of this without a warrant. In some cases, the Government has no suspicion whatsoever.[10] In every case, the Fourth Amendment rights of its citizens are being violated.

[3]        For these and other reasons, Riley v. California,[11] where the Supreme Court unanimously held that warrantless searches of a cell phone incident to arrest were unreasonable and therefore violated the Fourth Amendment,[12] came at the right time. As discussed below, Riley marks a new era of privacy protection that does not yield in the face of the broad, McCarthy-esque justifications of “national security” and the “war on terror.” Instead, the Court recognized that “protection against such invasions of individual security”[13] supports the conclusion that pre-digital era case law could neither foresee nor protect against these invasions.

[4]        The Court’s decision suggests that cellular telephones, particularly smartphones, along with laptop computers and other digital devices, are the twenty-first century’s private ‘homes,’ where individuals store the “papers and affects” traditionally accorded Fourth Amendment protection. The unanswered question, however, is whether Riley is the beginning of a principled, Katz-driven jurisprudence that focuses on privacy protection[14] or a muddled jurisprudence that immerses itself in the many hyper-technicalities that characterized the post-Chimel era.[15] This essay argues that Riley is the new Katz, and marks the beginning of increased protections for privacy in the digital age.

II. The New Katz: Privacy for the Digital Age

[5]        In Riley, the Court held that the original justifications for warrantless searches incident to arrest under Chimel—officer safety and the preservation of evidence—were not implicated in cell phone searches.[16] Writing for a unanimous court,[17] Justice Roberts correctly held that cell phones could not be used as weapons[18] and that the likelihood of evidence destruction was remote.[19] Thus, absent exigent circumstances law enforcement could not search an arrestee’s cell phone without a warrant and probable cause.[20] Several aspects of the Court’s opinion suggested that the Government’s days of relying on case law from an era of rotary telephones, eight-track tapes, and crumpled cigarette packs is over.[21] Specifically, in distinguishing cell phones from physical objects such as plastic containers, wallets, and address books, the Court recognized that “[c]ell phones differ in both a quantitative and a qualitative sense from other objects that might be kept on an arrestee’s person.”[22]

A. The Quantity of Information in Cell Phones 

[6]        Justice Roberts’ opinion recognized that cellular phones, particularly smartphones, are not really “phones” in a traditional sense.[23] Justice Roberts wrote:

The term “cell phone” is itself misleading shorthand; many of these devices are in fact minicomputers that also happen to have the capacity to be used as a telephone. They could just as easily be called cameras, video players, rolodexes, calendars, tape recorders, libraries, diaries, albums, televisions, maps, or newspapers.[24]

[7]        Furthermore, cell phones can hold “millions of pages of text, thousands of pictures, or hundreds of videos [and] . . . [e]ven the most basic phones that sell for less than $20 might hold photographs, picture messages, text messages, Internet browsing history, a calendar, [and] a thousand-entry phone book.”[25]

[8]        Additionally, a cell phone “collects in one place many distinct types of information—an address, a note, a prescription, a bank statement, a video—that reveal much more in combination than any isolated record.”[26] As Justice Roberts explained, this information implicates privacy in a manner that physical objects do not:

[A] cell phone’s capacity allows even just one type of information to convey far more than previously possible. The sum of an individual’s private life can be reconstructed through a thousand photographs labeled with dates, locations, and descriptions; the same cannot be said of a photograph or two of loved ones tucked into a wallet. Third, the data on a phone can date back to the purchase of the phone, or even earlier. A person might carry in his pocket a slip of paper reminding him to call Mr. Jones; he would not carry a record of all his communications with Mr. Jones for the past several months, as would routinely be kept on a phone.[27]

Justice Roberts also emphasized the “element of pervasiveness that characterizes cell phones but not physical records, [holding that] . . . [p]rior to the digital age, people did not typically carry a cache of sensitive personal information with them as they went about their day.”[28] Comparing cell phones to physical objects was “like saying a ride on horseback is materially indistinguishable from a flight to the moon. Both are ways of getting from point A to point B, but little else justifies lumping them together.”[29]

B. The Quality of Information in a Cell Phone

[9]        Most importantly, the Court held that cell phones store uniquely private information.[30] For example, “Internet search and browsing history . . . can be found on an Internet-enabled phone and could reveal an individual’s private interests or concerns—perhaps a search for certain symptoms of disease, coupled with frequent visits to WebMD.”[31] In addition, “application software on a cell phone, or ‘apps,ʼ offer a range of tools for managing detailed information about all aspects of a person’s life.”[32] In fact, quoting Learned Hand, Justice Roberts held that the quantity and quality of private information stored on a cell phone is even greater than that stored in a home:

In 1926, Learned Hand observed . . . that it is “a totally different thing to search a man’s pockets and use against him what they contain, from ransacking his house for everything which may incriminate him.” If his pockets contain a cell phone, however, that is no longer true. Indeed, a cell phone search would typically expose to the government far more than the most exhaustive search of a house: A phone not only contains in digital form many sensitive records previously found in the home; it also contains a broad array of private information never found in a home in any form—unless the phone is.[33]

[10]      Furthermore, through the use of cloud computing, some of “the data a user views on many modern cell phones may not in fact be stored on the device itself . . . [due to] the capacity of Internet-connected devices to display data stored on remote servers.”[34]

III. The Significance of Riley and its Application to other Cases

[11]      Riley is a landmark decision and marks the beginning of the end of the Government’s intrusion into the private digital lives of its citizens.

A. Pre-Digital Case Law is Easily Distinguishable and Therefore No Longer Controls

[12]      The Court recognized that pre-digital era case law could not be applied to digital-era problems.[35] First, Justice Roberts found unpersuasive the Government’s reliance on United States v. Robinson, where the Court upheld, under Chimel, the warrantless search of a crumpled up cigarette pack.[36] The Court’s decision in Robinson significantly expanded Chimel by holding that “custodial arrest of a suspect based on probable cause is a reasonable intrusion under the Fourth Amendment; that intrusion being lawful, a search incident to the arrest requires no additional justification.”[37] Thus, under Robinson it did not matter whether the original justifications under Chimel—officer safety or evidence preservation—were implicated.[38] The Riley Court rejected the reasoning in Robinson and, although the Court did not directly overturn Robinson’s holding that Chimel’s dual objectives “are present in all custodial arrests,” it found that there “are no comparable risks when the search is of digital data.”[39]

[13]      Additionally, although the Robinson Court “regarded any privacy interests retained by an individual after arrest as significantly diminished by the fact of the arrest itself,” the same could not be said in the cell phone context.[40] Indeed, cell phones “place vast quantities of personal information literally in the hands of individuals,” a search of which “bears little resemblance to the type of brief physical search considered in Robinson.”[41] Furthermore, “[t]he possibility that a search might extend well beyond papers and effects in the physical proximity of an arrestee is yet another reason that the privacy interests here dwarf those in Robinson.”[42] Put differently, depending on the privacy interests at stake, “[n]ot every search ‘is acceptable solely because a person is in custody.’”[43]

[14]      The Court also rejected the Government’s reliance on Arizona v. Gant,[44] which “added . . . an independent exception for a warrantless search of a vehicle’s passenger compartment ‘when it is reasonable to believe evidence relevant to the crime of arrest might be found in the vehicle.”’[45] Importantly, however, Gant relied on “circumstances unique to the vehicle context” to endorse a search solely for the purpose of gathering evidence.[46] Relying on Justice Scalia’s concurring opinion in Thornton v. United States,[47] Justice Roberts explained that the unique circumstances in Gant are “ʻa reduced expectation of privacyʼ and ‘heightened law enforcement needs’ when it comes to motor vehicles.”[48] Searches of cell phones, however, “bear neither of those characteristics.”[49]

[15]      Most importantly, Justice Roberts recognized that the standard adopted in Gant “would prove no practical limit at all when it comes to cell phone searches,”[50] stating as follows:

In the vehicle context, Gant generally protects against searches for evidence of past crimes. In the cell phone context, however, it is reasonable to expect that incriminating information will be found on a phone regardless of when the crime occurred. Similarly, in the vehicle context Gant restricts broad searches resulting from minor crimes such as traffic violations. That would not necessarily be true for cell phones. It would be a particularly inexperienced or unimaginative law enforcement officer who could not come up with several reasons to suppose evidence of just about any crime could be found on a cell phone. Even an individual pulled over for something as basic as speeding might well have locational data dispositive of guilt on his phone. An individual pulled over for reckless driving might have evidence on the phone that shows whether he was texting while driving. The sources of potential pertinent information are virtually unlimited, so applying the Gant standard to cell phones would in effect give “police officers unbridled discretion to rummage at will among a person’s private effects.”[51]

The Court also rejected the Government’s reliance on Smith v. Maryland,[52] which upheld the use of pen registers to monitor outgoing calls from a suspect’s private residence.[53] In doing so, the Court rejected the Government’s argument that searches can be limited to call logs, as they “typically contain more than just phone numbers; they include any identifying information that an individual might add.”[54] Finally, the Court refused to permit searches of cell phone data “if [law enforcement] could have obtained the same information from a pre-digital counterpart.”[55] In fact, Justice Roberts made it a point to distance the Court from applying pre-digital era case law to digital age technology:

[T]he fact that a search in the pre-digital era could have turned up a photograph or two in a wallet does not justify a search of thousands of photos in a digital gallery. The fact that someone could have tucked a paper bank statement in a pocket does not justify a search of every bank statement from the last five years. And to make matters worse, such an analogue test would allow law enforcement to search a range of items contained on a phone, even though people would be unlikely to carry such a variety of information in physical form.[56]

[16]      Indeed, “a significant diminution of privacy” would result if law enforcement could search all areas of a cell phone merely to locate information that could be stored in a pre-digital era physical object.[57] Furthermore, the Government’s argument that law enforcement could “‘develop protocols to address’ concerns raised by cloud computing,” was unpersuasive because “the Founders did not fight a revolution to gain the right to government agency protocols.”[58] They fought to ensure that the Government could not run roughshod over the privacy rights of its citizens—even if its citizens might be safer as a result.

[17]      Ultimately, Justice Roberts’ opinion suggests that the Government will now be required to provide a digital-era justification to search the “papers and effects” that are stored in cell phones.[59] At the heart of Justice Roberts’ opinion was a desire to prevent law enforcement from conducting the types of broad, non-particularized searches, which was “one of the driving forces behind the Revolution itself,” and led the Founders to adopt the Fourth Amendment.[60] Indeed, “the Fourth Amendment was the founding generation’s response to the reviled ‘general warrants’ and ‘writs of assistance’ of the colonial era, which allowed British officers to rummage through homes in an unrestrained search for evidence of criminal activity.”[61]

B. Rejecting an Ad Hoc, Case-By-Case Jurisprudence

[18]      In a noticeable departure from its Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, the Court emphasized the importance of creating bright-line rules to govern searches of private cell phone data.[62] Justice Roberts wrote that “if police are to have workable rules, the balancing of the competing interests . . . ‘must in large part be done on a categorical basis—not in an ad hoc, case-by-case fashion by individual police officers.’”[63] Otherwise, the Court would be thrust into an uncertain jurisprudence that would raise more questions than it would answer:

[A]n analogue test would launch courts on a difficult line-drawing expedition to determine which digital files are comparable to physical records. Is an e-mail equivalent to a letter? Is a voicemail equivalent to a phone message slip? It is not clear how officers could make these kinds of decisions before conducting a search, or how courts would apply the proposed rule after the fact. An analogue test would “keep defendants and judges guessing for years to come.”[64]

[19]      The Court may have recognized the difficulties that arose in the years after Chimel, where the Court’s ad hoc jurisprudence was often based on hyper-technicalities that resulted in a muddled, uncertain, and unworkable jurisprudence.[65] Indeed, after Robinson,[66] Gant,[67] and New York v. Belton,[68] law enforcement had nearly unfettered authority to conduct warrantless searches incident to arrest, even where officer safety and evidence preservation rationales were non-existent. Simply put, for many years the warrant requirement ceased to exist the moment law enforcement slapped handcuffs on a suspect.

C. Support for an Internet Neutrality Doctrine

[20]      Although it is a Fourth Amendment case, the majority’s reasoning in Riley reflects a fundamental truth: the world has changed, and to protect basic civil liberties, the law must change as well. This is particularly true with respect to the Internet, which is the digital age equivalent of traditional public and limited purpose public forums (e.g., public sidewalks and town halls), just as cellular telephones are similar to a private home for search and seizure purposes.[69] The Internet enables the free flow of information between networks, including speech on matters of political, social, and commercial importance. Importantly, however, through pricing and “traffic shaping,”[70] which involves “slowing down some forms of traffic, like file-sharing, while giving others priority,”[71] Internet service providers have the ability to discriminate against users based on the content of their message, and thus thwart public debate and stifle competition. These practices are the equivalent of allowing the Boy Scouts to march in the public square, while relegating flag burners to desolated areas, remote deserts, or dark alleys.[72] Consequently, the Court should embrace a net neutrality doctrine for the same reason it invalidated warrantless cell phone searches in Riley: technology has ushered civil liberties into the virtual world, and the law must adapt by providing legal protections to individuals who speak, assemble, and associate in that world.

D. The End of Metadata: Protecting Cell Phones as Objects and Repositories for the Fourth Amendment’s ‘Papers and Effects’

[21]      Riley establishes cell phones as the new repository for the “papers and effects” that the Fourth Amendment protects from warrantless searches.[73] Not only did the Court reject the Government’s analogies to pre-digital era physical objects, such as plastic containers, wallets, and crumpled cigarette packs, but it also held that cell phone data, both in quantity and quality, contains more private information than can be found in a private home.[74] To be sure, “[a] phone not only contains in digital form many sensitive records previously found in the home; it also contains a broad array of private information never found in a home in any form—unless the phone is.”[75]

[22]      In so holding, the Court implicitly recognized that cell phones, to an even greater degree than private homes, engender privacy protections as objects, and not merely because of the private data they contain. Thus, just like law enforcement officers cannot enter a home to search for incriminating evidence that might be in plain view inside the home, they cannot search any area of a cell phone, even though some areas, such as a call log, are less private than, for example, Internet browser history.[76] The point of Riley was that cell phones are protected not just for what they contain, but for how they are used in modern society, and for the privacy expectations that millions of individuals have in their phones. Thus, individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy not merely in a cell phone’s contents, but in the phone itself.[77] This could signal the end to warrantless metadata collection, where the Government used cell phone towers to monitor and collect information such as outgoing calls and physical location. In fact, the Court suggested that this type of information also warrants Fourth Amendment protection, “[d]ata on a cell phone can also reveal where a person has been. Historic location information is a standard feature on many smart phones and can reconstruct someone’s specific movements down to the minute, not only around town but also within a particular building.”[78]

[23]      For purposes of metadata collection, the message is clear: the Supreme Court is likely to hold that Government will not be permitted to indiscriminately collect metadata unless it has, at the very least, reasonable suspicion.[79]

E. The Third-Party Doctrine May be Invalidated

[24]      The third-party doctrine is also a product of pre-digital era case law, and holds that individuals who knowingly transmit information through a third party can be found to have waived their expectation of privacy in such information.[80] Essentially, because individuals know that a third party may or will view information that is transmitted via a cell phone, they implicitly consent to its disclosure to additional parties. The problem with the third-party doctrine, however, is identical to the problem the Government faced when trying to equate searches of physical containers with searches of cell phone data. The third-party doctrine was developed in an era when the information in question, e.g., a bank record or paper check, did not implicate the same privacy concerns as are present in the cell phone context. As one commentator notes, “the Supreme Court decisions that established the third-party doctrine are decades old,”[81] and cell phones, just as they are not containers or address books, are unlike “information voluntarily conveyed to banks in the ordinary course of business.”[82]

Riley is Katz for the Digital Age

[25]      To the extent that questions remain about the scope and significance of Riley, they can be put to rest by reading three critical passages in the majority opinion that show beyond doubt that Riley is Katz for the digital age. Indeed, courts should not repeat the mistakes that occurred in the post-Chimel era, where courts created an ad hoc, hyper-technical, and muddled jurisprudence that eviscerated Chimel’s limitations and led to expansive searches regardless of concerns about officer safety and evidence preservation.[83] In fact, Riley was the logical result of a jurisprudence that had nearly abandoned the original Chimel justifications, and this time the Court signaled that it will not make the same mistake again.

[26]      First, by holding that there “are no comparable risks [to officer safety and the destruction of evidence] when the search is of digital data,”[84] the Court recognized that digital devices are so fundamentally different from pre-digital era objects that they justified a categorical prohibition against warrantless searches.[85] Second, the Court stated in no uncertain terms that cell phones contain a “broad array of private information never found in a home in any form—unless the phone is,”[86] and a case-by-case, Chimel-type jurisprudence would only threaten to confuse, undermine, and render uncertain the core commitment to protecting privacy.[87] Indeed, phones are not merely a compilation of YouTube videos, Amazon.com purchases, and personal photographs. They house users’ thoughts, private expressions, and most intimate and confidential communications.[88] Third, and in recognition of this fact, the Court refused to fashion an “analogue test [that] would launch courts on a difficult line-drawing expedition to determine which digital files are comparable to physical records.”[89] Instead, the Court understood that, although the Fourth Amendment remains unchanged from its original purpose, the technology era has changed everything else.[90] With those changes came a reaffirmation of that purpose and a commitment to protect core civil liberties.

[27]      Ultimately, the information on a cell phone is so private that the only line to be drawn is precisely where the Court did: “[o]ur answer to the question of what police must do before searching a cell phone seized incident to an arrest is accordingly simple—get a warrant.”[91] Riley is the new Katz, and soon the Government’s ability to track metadata, record Internet browser history, apply the third-party doctrine to digital data, and peer into other aspects of our private lives will end—just like pre-digital era case law saw its relevance disappear in Riley.

IV. Conclusion

[28]      Justice Brandeis forecasted that “[t]he progress of science in furnishing the Government with means of espionage is not likely to stop with wiretapping.”[92] In the law enforcement and government surveillance context, technological advances have made it possible to store an individual’s DNA in a national database, and have made it nearly impossible for that same individual to send an e-mail, download a YouTube video, or transmit a text message without knowing that the government might be watching—without having the slightest degree of suspicion of criminal behavior. In any society that values basic civil liberties, such practices are intolerable—and unconstitutional. In Riley, the Court correctly held that, if privacy is to mean anything, it should protect individuals from being monitored without their consent, without a reason, and without a warrant. It is the beginning of principled change and enhanced protections for civil liberties in the digital age.

 


 

* Assistant Professors of Law, Indiana Tech Law School.

[1] Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 485 (1928) (Brandeis, J., dissenting), overruled by Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 353 (1967).

[2] Olmstead, 277 U.S. 438.

[3] See id. at 466.

[4] Id. at 474.

[5] See, e.g., Klayman v. Obama, 957 F. Supp. 2d 1, 7 (D.D.C. 2013) (describing the information involved in metadata collection).

[6] See Glen Greenwald, XKeyscore: NSA tool collection ‘nearly everything a user does on the internet,The Guardian (July 31, 2013, 8:56 AM), http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/nsa-top-secret-program-online-data, archived at http://perma.cc/Y847-C3Q7.

[7] See Jason Mick, Tax and Spy: How the NSA Can Hack Any American, Stores Data 15 Years, Daily Tech (Dec. 31, 2013, 12:36 PM), http://www.dailytech.com/Former+FBI+Agent+All+Your+Communications+are+Recorded+Government+Accessible/article31486.htm, archived at http://perma.cc/ZWZ4-STDD.

[8] See Adam Weinstein, The Government’s Phone, Text, and Email Spying, Explained, Fusion (Oct. 25, 2013, 6:00 PM), http://fusion.net/abc_univision/story/governments-phone-text-email-spying-explained-22515, archived at http://perma.cc/VCC2-CPHP.

[9] See Jeremy Scahill & Ryan Devereaux, The Secret Government Rulebook for Labeling You a Terrorist, The Intercept (July 23, 2014, 2:45 PM), https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/0/23/blacklisted/, archived at http://perma.cc/4FPY-A344; see also Watchlisting Guidance, U.S. Nat’l Counterterrorism Center (Mar. 2013) (detailing government qualifications for putting people on a terrorist watchlist).

[10] See Scahill & Devereaux, supra note 9.

[11] Riley v. California, 134 S. Ct. 2473 (2014).

[12] See id. at 2493.

[13] Olmstead, 277 U.S. at 473–74.

[14] See Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 350-51 (1967) (focusing on an individual’s right to be left alone rather than determining what geographic areas are constitutionally protected).

[15] See Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 762–63 (1967); see also Arizona v. Gant, 556 U.S. 332, 342 (2009 ); New York v. Belton; and United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 235 (1973) (highlighting the hyper-technicalities that characterized this post Chimel world). In Chimel, the Court created the search-incident-to-arrest doctrine, which allows warrantless searches of an arrestee’s person to protect officer safety and preserve evidence:

When an arrest is made, it is reasonable for the arresting officer to search the person arrested in order to remove any weapons that the latter might seek to use in order to resist arrest or effect his escape. Otherwise, the officer’s safety might well be endangered, and the arrest itself frustrated. In addition, it is entirely reasonable for the arresting officer to search for and seize any evidence on the arrestee’s person in order to prevent its concealment or destruction. . . . There is ample justification, therefore, for a search of the arrestee’s person and the area “within his immediate control”—construing that phrase to mean the area from within which he might gain possession of a weapon or destructible evidence.

Chimel, at 762-63.

In the years following Chimel, the Court expanded Chimel to allow virtually all warrantless searches incident to arrest, even if safety and evidence preservation were not implicated. See, e.g., Belton, 453 U.S. at 460 (1981) (expanding Chimel to hold that law enforcement officers may search the passenger compartment of an arrestee’s vehicle).

[16] See Riley, 134 S. Ct. at 2484–85.

[17] Id. at 2480.

[18] See id. at 2485.

[19] See id. at 2486–87.

[20] See id. at 2493.

[21] See Riley 134 S. Ct. at 2485, 2488–89.

[22] Id. at 2489.

[23] See id.

[24] Id.

[25] Id.

[26] Riley, 134 S. Ct. at 2489.

[27] Id.

[28] Id. at 2490 (“It is no exaggeration to say that many of the more than 90% of American adults who own a cell phone keep on their person a digital record of nearly every aspect of their lives—from the mundane to the intimate.”).

[29] Id. at 2488.

[30] Id. at 2473.

[31] Riley, 134 S. Ct. at 2490.

[32] Id.

[33] Id. at 2490–91 (quoting United States v. Kirschenblatt, 16 F.2d 202, 203 (2d Cir. 1926)).

[34] Id. at 2491.

[35] See Riley, 134 S. Ct. at 2484, 2494.

[36] See United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 225–26 (1973).

[37] Id. at 235.

[38] See id. at 235.

[39] Riley, 134 at 2484–85.

[40] Id.

[41] Id. at 2485.

[42] Id.at 2491.

[43] Id. at 2488 (quoting Maryland v. King 133 S. Ct. 1958, 1979 (2013)).

[44] See id. at 2492.

[45] Riley, 134 S. Ct. at 2484 (quoting Arizona v. Gant, 556 U.S. 332, 343 (2009)).

[46] Gant, 556 U.S. at 343.

[47] Thornton v. United States, 541 U.S. 615, 628–32 (2004) (Scalia, J., concurring).

[48] Riley, 134 S. Ct. at 2492 (quoting Thornton, 541 U.S. at 631).

[49] Id. at 2492.

[50] Id.

[51] Id. (quoting Gant, 556 U.S. at 345).

[52] See id., 134 S. Ct. at 2492–93.

[53] See Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735 at 745–46 (1979).

[54] Riley, 134 S. Ct. at 2492–93.

[55] Id. at 2493.

[56] Id.

[57] Id.

[58] Id. at 2491.

[59] Id. at 2493.

[60] Riley, 134 S. Ct. at 2494.

[61] Id.

[62] See id. at 2491–92.

[63] Id. at 2491–92 (quoting Michigan v. Summers, 452 U.S. 692, 705 n.19 (1981)).

[64] Riley, 134 S. Ct. at 2493 (quoting Sykes v. United States, 131 S. Ct. 2267, 2287 (2011) (Scalia, J., dissenting)).

[65] See Arizona v. Gant, 556 U.S. 332, 345–47 (2009).

[66] United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 235 (1973) (holding a custodial arrest based on probable cause is a reasonable intrusion under the Fourth Amendment and requires no additional justification to conduct a search incident to arrest).

[67] Gant, 556 U.S. at 342 (expanding Chimel to allow warrantless searches of vehicles when the passenger is unsecured and within reaching distance of the vehicle, and when there is reason to believe evidence relevant to the crime of arrest may be found within).

[68] New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, 459 (1981) (holding that upon arrest, law enforcement may search a vehicle’s passenger compartment).

[69] See, e.g., Perry Educ. Ass’n v. Perry Local Educators’ Ass’n, 460 U.S. 37, 45 (1983) (“A traditional public forum is property that by long tradition or by government that have been devoted to assembly and debate”).

[70] Christopher R. Steffe, Why We Need Net Neutrality Now Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Start Trusting the FCC, 58 Drake L. Rev. 1149, 1158 (2010).

[71] Id.

[72] See Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989) (invalidating a statute prohibiting desecration of the American flag).

[73] See U.S. Const. amend. IV (“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no [w]arrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by [o]ath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized”); see also Riley, 134 S. Ct. at 2491.

[74] See Riley, 134 S. Ct. at 2490–91.

[75] Id. at 2491.

[76] See id. at 2489.

[77] Id. at 2494–95 (“Our answer to the question of what police must do before searching a cell phone seized incident to arrest is accordingly simply get a warrant.”).

[78] Id. at 2490 (citing United States v. Jones, 132 S. Ct. 945, 955 (2012) (Sotomayor, J., concurring) (“GPS monitoring generates a precise, comprehensive record of a person’s public movements that reflects a wealth of detail about her familial, political, professional, religious, and sexual associations.”)).

[79] See, e.g., Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 21 (1968) (establishing the reasonable suspicion standard, which requires law enforcement, “to point to specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant that intrusion”).

[80] See United States v. Miller, 425 U.S. 435, 442–43 (1976).

[81] Jeremy H. Rothstein, Note, Track Me Maybe: The Fourth Amendment and the Use of Cell Phone Tracking to Facilitate Arrest, 81 Fordham L. Rev. 489, 506 (2012).

[82] Id. at 506–07 (discussing United States v. Miller, 425 U.S. 435, 442-43 (1976)).

[83] See generally Arizona v. Gant, 556 U.S. 332, 342 (2009 ) (expanding Chimel to allow warrantless searches of vehicles when the passenger is unsecured and within reaching a distance of the vehicle, and when there is reason to believe evidence relevant to the crime of arrest may be found within); New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, 459 (1981) (holding that upon arrest, law enforcement may search a vehicle’s passenger compartment); and United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 235 (1973) (holding a custodial arrest based on probable cause is a reasonable intrusion under the Fourth Amendment and requires no additional justification to conduct a search incident to arrest).

[84]Riley, 134 S. Ct. at 2485.

[85] See id. at 2493.

[86] Id. at 2490–91 (emphasis added).

[87] See id. at 2484–85.

[88] See id. at 2490.

[89] Riley, 134 S. Ct. at 2493.

[90] See id. at 2490–91.

[91] Id. at 2495.

[92] Olmstead, 277 U.S. at 474 (Brandeis, J., dissenting).

It’s Time for Revenge Porn to Get a Taste of Its Own Medicine: An Argument for the Federal Criminalization of Revenge Porn

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Cite as: Taylor Linkous, It’s Time for Revenge Porn to Get a Taste of Its Own Medicine: An Argument for the Federal Criminalization of Revenge Porn, 20 Rich. J.L. & Tech. 14 (2014), http://jolt.richmond.edu/v20i4/article14.pdf.

Taylor Linkous

I.  Introduction

[1]       Throughout history, pornography and technology have enjoyed a symbiotic relationship, each playing a significant role in the growth and widespread success of the other.  From the VCR and camcorders to the Polaroid camera and the Internet, the pornography industry has always accelerated the growth of new technologies, paving the way for these new services to be introduced into mainstream society.[1]  Most of these new technologies were appealing to creators and consumers of pornography because the new technologies brought an increased sense of privacy.[2]  For example, much of the success of the Polaroid camera is said to come from the fact that people felt they could take explicit photos without having to go to the store to get the film developed.[3]  Similarly, pornography and the promise of privacy helped drive the success of cable TV and the VCR.[4]  As Peter Johnson writes,

Videotape first emerged as a cheap and efficient alternative to film (later kinescope) for TV production.  Its development for home use owes its birth to Sony and Betamax but its maturity to porn.[5]

Correspondingly, with the introduction of these new technologies the porn industry has continually been able to grow and push the limits.  With the launch of the VCR, the porn industry gained a new audience of people willing to watch their films; “[i]nstead of travelling to a disreputable store, viewers could watch films at their convenience at home.”[6]  This audience has only continued to grow with the introduction of revolutionary technologies, especially the Internet, which have made pornography easy and cheap to produce by lowering the barriers to entry and transaction costs.[7]  As Coopersmith states, “[e]ssentially, cyberporn has become an economist’s ideal free good: pornography is easily accessible, incurs minimum transaction costs, and enjoys a large demand.” [8]  Thus, the relationship between technology and pornography has existed for some time now and the bond between the two seems unbreakable.

[2]       While this historical interdependence has clearly been mutually beneficial for the porn industry and new technologies, there has been collateral damage.  For example, the Internet has significantly exacerbated the distribution and viewing of child pornography, and the cell phone started a “sexting” craze among teens and adults.[9]  In recent years, this collateral damage has come in the form of harassment, humiliation, invasion of privacy, and loss of reputation with the rise of revenge porn.  With the growth and normalization of the camera/video phone and modern ease with which individuals can now create, manage, and navigate websites, has come the revenge porn phenomenon.  Just like Polaroid cameras, camera phones have given individuals a sense of privacy, making them feel comfortable taking and sending explicit pictures and videos.[10]  A survey conducted by Match.com in 2012 found that out of 5,000 adults, 57% of men and 45% of women had received an explicit photo on their phone and 38% of men and 35% of women had sent one.[11]  Unfortunately, the sense of privacy encouraging this behavior is false, because unlike Polaroid photographs, these pictures and videos can easily be uploaded to a revenge porn website by an ex-lover, “friend,” hacker, or anyone else who happens to come upon them.  Once this happens, those seemingly “private” pictures he or she probably thought only their boyfriend or girlfriend would view are then available for the world to see.

[3]       Currently, the act of posting revenge porn is a crime in only fourteen states—Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin.[12]  However, over the past year, as victims of revenge porn increasingly advocate for laws criminalizing revenge porn, many more states are considering such legislation.[13]  Legal scholars differ in their opinions on the best way to deal with revenge porn.  Some argue a criminal law is unnecessary as victims are already able to file civil suits against those who posted the pictures based on claims such as copyright infringement, intentional inflection of emotional distress, or defamation.[14]  Others argue revenge porn should be treated like other forms of online sexual harassment and many contend that there should be an amendment to § 230 of the Communications Decency Act (“CDA”) to allow victims to go after the revenge porn websites.[15]

[4]       This comment analyzes the various potential legal approaches to dealing with revenge porn and posits that a federal law criminalizing the dissemination of revenge porn is necessary to combat this growing trend.  Part II provides background information on revenge porn and further analyzes how the successful relationship between technology and pornography led to the rise of revenge porn.  Part III analyzes the different civil remedies currently available to revenge porn victims and argues these are not practicable solutions.  Part IV discusses the current state laws criminalizing revenge porn and the legal challenges faced by those affected by revenge porn and legislators seeking to tackle this problem.  Finally, Part V proposes that a federal law criminalizing revenge porn is the best solution to this unsettling new movement.

 

II.  Background Information on Revenge Porn and Its Rise to Recognition

[5]       As stated above, technology and pornography have lived symbiotically with each other for quite some time.  The introduction of the Internet made access to pornography easier and widened the audience by allowing people to view pornography in the comforts of their own home.  Moreover, the Internet and other new technologies, such as the Smartphone, have made it easy and more appealing for people to create and distribute Do-It-Yourself (“DIY”) pornography.  Below I will first provide background information on revenge porn and explain what this trend is all about.  Then, I will analyze how technological progress helped lead to the rise in revenge porn.

A.  What Is Revenge Porn?

[6]       Revenge porn is a nude picture or video that is publicly shared on the Internet, usually by an ex-lover, for the purpose of humiliation.[16]  Despite the relatively recent media attention, revenge porn has been around for years.  As far back as 2000, an Italian researcher identified a new genre of pornography where explicit pictures of ex-girlfriends were being shared in Usenet groups.[17]  Later, in 2008, the first websites and blogs completely dedicated to this type of porn started to pop up.[18]  Then in 2010, the first person went to prison for posting revenge porn in New Zealand.[19]  This person was Joshua Ashby and he was found guilty of distributing an “indecent model or object” to the public when he posted a picture of his naked ex-girlfriend on Facebook.[20]  That same year, Hunter Moore established one of the most popular revenge porn sites, IsAnyoneUp.com.[21]

[7]       Normally on revenge porn websites, the explicit images or videos are posted on the site and submitted with the victim’s name, a link to his or her Facebook, and other personal information.[22]  Citing Cyber Civil Rights Statistics on Revenge Porn from 2013, Danielle Keats Citron and Mary Anne Franks, law professors and anti-revenge porn advocates, stated, “[i]n a study of 1,244 individuals, over 50% reported that their naked photos appeared next to their full name and social network profile; over 20% reported that their e[-]mail addresses and telephone numbers appeared next to their naked photos.”[23]  On IsAnyoneUp.com, each submission to the website usually included a depiction of the man or woman’s Facebook or Twitter thumbnail, pictures of them clothed, and pictures of them “exposing their genitalia, or even in some cases, engaging in sexual acts.”[24]  Another revenge porn website, MyEx.com, also includes first and last names and links to social media information along with the images posted.  This site also charges victims upwards of $500 to remove the photographs.[25]  Posting personal information along with these images threatens the victim’s safety, enabling strangers to stalk and harass them.  Although the name “revenge porn” comes from the idea that these photos are posted by jilted ex-lovers, sometimes the pictures are reportedly acquired “through hacking, theft by repair people or false personal ads.”[26]

B.  Internet + Smartphones + DIY Porn = Revenge Porn

[8]       In 1995, when Congress took its first stab at regulating the Internet with the introduction of the CDA as part of the Telecommunications Act amendments,[27] less than 0.4% of the world’s population was using the Internet.[28]  Then, only two years after the CDA was passed, the Supreme Court held sections 223(a) and 223(d) unconstitutional in Reno v. ACLU,[29] essentially leaving the immature Internet “free to develop without government regulation of pornography.”[30]  With the ability to freely experiment and develop during this time of very little regulation, technology and pornography’s relationship thrived.

[9]       The Internet allowed the porn industry to bypass zoning laws, age restrictions, and postal regulations, while pornography aided the Internet’s quick development by constantly pushing the limits of new technologies.[31]  For example, “[i]n 2001, Blaise Cronin and Elisabeth Davenport stated, ‘It is universally acknowledged by information technology experts that the adult entertainment industry has been at the leading edge in terms of building high-performance Web sites with state-of-the-art features and functionality.’”[32]  So, with little government regulation over the past decade, the Internet and pornography have consistently matured and prospered.

[10]     New and improved technologies allowing pornographers to provide images and videos quicker, cheaper, and more efficiently have certainly turned pornography into a booming business.[33]  In 2006, there were about 4.2 million pornographic websites and the annual pornography revenue in the United States was over $13 billion.[34]  Additionally, easy access to these websites has increased the amount of viewers.[35]  The user-friendly nature of pornography on the Internet “means that many who would never have sought it out before consume it regularly.”[36]  Unfortunately, this class of people is likely largely made up of curious children, who have explicit, hard-core porn available at their fingertips, quite literally.[37]  The widespread use of Smartphones in recent years has made pornography even easier to access and has become the primary way people view pornography.  According to statistics report from PornHub, the majority of porn in the United States is now viewed using smartphones.[38]  The website reported that 52% of its content was being viewed on mobile devices, a 10% increase from 2012, when it was reported only 47% of the website’s content was being viewed on smartphones.[39]

[11]     Not only have the Internet and smartphones increased access for viewers, but both have also made it easy for amateur pornographers to distribute their work and encourage people to engage in “DIY porn.”[40]  Dr. Gail Salts, an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at New York Presbyterian Hospital, stated,

What’s new is technology at a very cheap cost, which allows you to do it and merchandize it in a greater way. . . .  You can do it yourself.  You can do it with a flip-cam.  You can do it with your phone and you can put it up with no effort.[41]

Thus, not only have advanced technologies made access to pornography very simple and increased the number of pornography consumers, they have also fostered more user-generated pornographic content.

[12]     I argue that the rise in revenge porn is a culmination of these technological advancements, easy accessibility, and the DIY porn trend, which are all a result of the lifelong partnership between technology and pornography.  The Internet and smartphones have made it extremely easy to create explicit photographs, send them to others, and upload them to websites.  Moreover, an increased sense of privacy and anonymity has encouraged more people to engage in this behavior.  All of these factors had a role in creating the perfect storm for revenge porn to catch on and begin ruining the lives of many victims.[42]

C.  The Negative Effects of Revenge Porn

[13]     While technology and pornography likely will continue to benefit from their advantageous relationship and look onwards to the next big development, the negative impact their recent revenge porn progeny has on its victims is significant and profound.  Holly Jacobs, a Florida woman who is now a strong advocate of strengthening laws against revenge porn and who founded the website End Revenge Porn, has been significantly affected by revenge porn.[43]  Jacobs found out from a friend that nude photos she had sent to her ex-boyfriend had been posted on her Facebook and then later to hundreds of revenge porn websites.[44]  Even more disturbing was that her name, e-mail address, and place of business were posted along with the pictures.[45]  As a result of victims’ personal information being posted with their pictures, 49% of the victims of revenge porn have said they have been harassed or stalked online by users who saw their material.[46]  Victims are extremely fearful of stalkers and often struggle with anxiety and panic attacks.[47]  More than 80% of revenge porn victims have experienced severe emotional distress.[48]  Unfortunately, researchers have found that this anxiety felt by victims of cyber harassment gets worse over time.[49]  In fact, some victims have committed suicide.[50]

[14]     This extreme anxiety is exacerbated by the detrimental effects revenge porn has on victims’ professional lives.  A simple search of a revenge porn victim’s name on the Internet quickly reveals these explicit pictures, costing many of them their jobs and preventing others from finding work.[51]  Moreover, once these images are on the Internet, it is next to impossible to have them removed.[52]  Another victim speaking under the pseudonym, Sarah, detailed her efforts to get her explicit photos removed from hundreds of revenge porn websites.[53]  Sarah could not afford filing a civil suit, so she filed a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) takedown request, stating that her ex-boyfriend was engaging in copyright infringement.[54]  However, many of the websites hosting her pictures were located in foreign countries, and thus outside the United States’ jurisdiction.[55]  Sarah was unable to get the photos removed from the Internet, and ultimately changed her name.[56]

D.  A Brief Look at a Few Revenge Porn Websites and Their Notorious Operators

[15]     The extremely popular revenge porn website mentioned above, IsAnyoneUp.com, was run by Hunter Moore.  The site received 30 million page views a month and featured thousands of nude pictures.[57]  Moore stated he received 10,000 image submissions in three months and his site was generating $8,000 in advertising revenue per month.[58]  Not only did this site solicit for naked photos, but additionally the submission form asked for the person’s name, link to their Facebook or Twitter page, and other personal information.[59]  Moore shut down IsAnyoneUp.com in April 2012 due to legal pressures involving child pornography.[60]  Interestingly enough, Moore ultimately sold the website to James McGigney, owner of Bullyville, an anti-bullying site.[61]  However, Moore quickly launched a new site, HunterMoore.TV, which he bragged would still allow people to submit naked photos of exes but would also include “mapping stuff” allowing users to stalk those pictured.[62]  Although Moore later denied this statement and claimed HunterMoore.TV would not feature this “mapping stuff,” the idea is not too far off from his work in the past.[63]

[16]     Moore confidently argues he is shielded from liability by § 230 of the CDA, an issue that will be discussed further below.[64]  While § 230 of the CDA does state that websites are not liable for content submitted by their users, it does not protect Moore from liability for federal criminal charges, such as conspiracy.  In fact, in late January of 2014, Moore and alleged accomplice, Charles Evens, were indicted on fifteen counts.[65]  These counts included conspiracy, seven counts of unauthorized access to a protected computer to obtain information, and seven counts of aggravated identity theft.[66]  According to the indictment, Moore paid Evans several times to hack into victims’ e-mail accounts and steal naked pictures in order to post on his website, IsAnyoneUp.com.[67]  If he is convicted, Moore faces up to five years for the conspiracy charge and computer hacking counts, and up to two years for aggravated identity theft.[68]

[17]     Another fellow revenge porn proprietor, Kevin Christopher Bollaert was arrested on thirty-one counts of conspiracy, identity theft, and extortion in California for his role in creating the website, ugotposted.com.[69]  The site is no longer operating, but when it was, Bollaert took it a step further by charging victims from $250 to $350 to remove the images through another website, changemyreputation.com.[70]  Also, Bollaert went as far as to require that the victim be identified by name, age, and other information.[71]  Additionally, a federal district court judge in Ohio ordered Bollaert and his co-founder of ugotposted.com, Eric Chason, to pay a woman $385,000 for posting explicit photos of her on the website without her consent.  The woman filed suit in May 2013 after discovering explicit pictures of herself as a minor had been distributed on ugotposted.com without her knowledge or consent.[72]  The default judgment against Chason and Bollaert included $150,000 for several child pornography counts, $10,000 for a right of publicity count, and $75,000 in punitive damages.[73]

III.  Potential Civil Remedies Available to Revenge Porn Victims[74]

[18]     Some legal scholars argue there is no need for criminal statutes because victims are already able to file civil suits against the people who posted their pictures.[75]  For example, tort laws such as intentional infliction of emotional distress, public disclosure of private information, defamation, or invasion of privacy may be available for some victims of revenge porn.[76]  Aside from the fact that these lawsuits are expensive and do not deter people from posting the images, § 230 of the CDA shields revenge porn websites from tort liability.[77]

[19]     One way around § 230 of the CDA is for the victim to sue the website for copyright infringement.  However, this option is available only if the person took the photograph or video.  If the person took the photograph or video, then he or she owns the copyright and can send a takedown notice to the website under the DMCA.[78]  If the website refuses to comply with the takedown notice, then the person is able to sue the website for copyright infringement.  While these civil remedies are accessible to some revenge porn victims, they are expensive, inconsistent, inefficient, and do very little to discourage people from posting revenge porn in the first place.

A.  Tort Law Is Not the Best Answer

[20]     As stated, some victims are able to file civil suits under existing privacy law or torts such as intentional infliction of emotional distress, defamation, or public disclosure of private information.[79]  Some people argue that the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress should be used to deal with revenge porn and other forms of online harassment because of its flexibility.[80]  Further, the common law tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress “reflects a desire to impose liability on both the first creator of the harm and the entity that enabled the harm.”[81]  Alternatively, there are several common law torts that are derived from the right to privacy and potentially available to victims of revenge porn: appropriation, false light, disclosure or wrongful publication of private facts, and intrusion.[82]  There is also defamation, which requires the plaintiff to show the defendant made a false and defamatory statement that harmed the plaintiff’s reputation.[83]

[21]     All of the above mentioned civil remedies are inadequate.  First of all, filing and litigating a civil suit takes lots of time and money that many victims of revenge porn do not have.  Revenge porn victims are most often private individuals who are not equipped with the necessary financial resources to litigate one of these suits.[84]  Additionally, it is very difficult to prove who actually posts revenge porn because people can easily submit photographs and videos anonymously.[85]  As discussed above, sometimes unknown hackers are the ones who submit these images.  While posters of revenge porn are able to remain anonymous, taking civil action means revenge porn victims likely will have to face more unwanted publicity.[86]

[22]     Moreover, for all of the money spent litigating such a suit, there is little reward.  Most of the time, people who post revenge porn will not be able to pay damages, even if revenge porn victims successfully litigate one of these cases.[87]  Even more concerning, the reality is that once these pictures are posted to a revenge porn website, even if the victim is able to legally force the user or website to take them down, the pictures are likely to spread all over the Internet and could easily pop back up again at any time.[88]  As Nancy Kim states, “[t]here is no combination injury in the offline world because there is no other method of distribution that is as inexpensive, accessible, widespread, and difficult—if not impossible—to retrieve.”[89]  Further, a civil suit may allow the victim to receive damages and could lead to the picture being taken down, but it does little to prevent this type of thing from happening in the future.  Thus, a civil suit is extremely costly, barely fixes the damage caused by revenge porn, and does not discourage people or websites from posting these images in the first place.

B.  Section 230 of the CDA

[23]     Civil remedies also are inadequate for a revenge porn victim because the actual websites posting their explicit photographs are likely protected from liability under § 230 of the CDA.  Section 230 protects website operators from liability stemming from its users’ posts, stating “[n]o provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”[90]  Section 230 was written as a way to combat novel legal issues arising from the widespread use of the Internet.[91]  While part of the CDA was struck down as unconstitutional, the defenses provided in § 230 endured.[92]

[24]     There are two defenses available for websites under § 230.  The first is one I have briefly touched on, which protects websites from being held liable as publishers of the content posted by their users, as long as the websites did not create it.[93]  The second defense protects providers of interactive computer services from liability on account of “any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider considers obscene, lewd, harassing, or otherwise objectionable.”[94]  Section 230 of the CDA further states that the law will not have an effect on other federal criminal statutes, but “[n]o cause of action may be brought and no liability may be imposed under any State or local law that is inconsistent with this section.”[95]  Thus, criminal liability for such actions imposed under federal law is not covered by the CDA’s protections, but websites likely are immune from the torts previously discussed above.

[25]     While most of the cases applying § 230 of the CDA have held websites immune from liability, the Ninth Circuit recently held a website liable for the illegality of hosted content because it helped create the content.[96]  In this case, the Fair Housing Councils of San Fernando Valley and San Diego brought action against Roommates.com alleging the website violated the Fair Housing Act and state laws.[97]  The part of the website alleged to offend the Fair Housing Act and state laws was information provided by subscribers in response to questions written by Roommate.com.[98]  Thus, the court held this part of the website was actually developed by Roommate.com: “Roommate becomes much more than a passive transmitter of information provided by others; it becomes the developer, at least in part, of that information.”[99]  This case may be applicable to revenge porn websites.  While many of the websites claim they are shielded from civil liability by § 230, revenge porn victims could use Fair Housing Council to argue these revenge porn websites are more than “passive transmitter[s] of information provided by others” and are actually developers of content not entitled to protection under § 230.[100]

[26]     Section 230 of the CDA likely shields revenge porn websites from civil liability, thus proving another reason civil law is an inadequate solution for victims.  However, with the recent decision by the Ninth Circuit in Fair Housing. Council, courts may be more willing to find revenge porn websites are developers of the content on their sites and not protected by § 230.

C.  Copyright Law Is Not the Best Remedy

[27]     Some victims have opted for sending takedown notices to the websites under copyright law.[101]  If the picture posted was a “selfie,” then the victim owns the copyright and he or she can send takedown notices to the revenge porn websites under the DMCA.[102]  If the website refuses to remove the image, the person can then sue the website for copyright infringement.  Revenge porn websites are not shielded from liability for these copyright infringement claims because § 230 has an exception for copyright infringement which allows victims to hold websites liable for republishing their copyrighted photographs.[103]  However, in order to receive statutory damages for this tort, a victim must register their copyright within ninety days of when it is published.[104]  Although a victim may not receive damages, sending DMCA takedown notices is relatively simple, and may be successful in getting an injunction against websites for posting the images online.[105]

[28]     While sending these takedown notices is less costly because it does not require a lawyer, copyright law suffers from similar inadequacies as tort law.  The reality is, copyright law does not discourage people from engaging in this activity, especially when most of the time the person posting the pictures does not end up having to pay the victim damages.  Once images are posted to one website, they rapidly spread across the Internet.  So, while a victim may be successful at issuing a takedown notice for one website, she may “encounter the ‘whack-a-mole’ problem” where “[a]s soon as copyrighted content is removed from one place, it pops up in another.”[106]  Further, this legal avenue is only available to people who took the sexually explicit photograph or video of themselves.

[29]     Thus, while there are currently existing laws that victims may use to sue the person who posted their picture, get an injunction, and possibly receive damages; these solutions are costly, not very effective, and none of them really get at the heart of the problem.

 

IV.  Current Criminal Laws Available and the Legal Challenges to Criminalizing Revenge Porn

[30]     While some victims have been successful in winning civil suits and some operators of these websites have been charged for federal crimes such as conspiracy and child pornography, there is still a legal grey area concerning whether the act of posting and distributing revenge porn should be a crime.  Federal and state cyberstalking laws might be an option for some revenge porn victims, but they are not ideal.  Also, some states already have laws seemingly broad enough to reach distributors of revenge porn.  However, many judges are reluctant to arbitrarily stretch laws past their plain language—regardless of how lewd or morally reprehensible an action may be.  This is illustrated by Massachusetts’ highest court’s recent holding that “upskirting” is legal as long as the person being photographed is not nude or partially nude.[107]  This understandable unwillingness of judges to broaden statutes beyond their plain language further highlights the need for specific laws targeting revenge porn.  A few states have recently introduced and passed legislation specifically aimed at criminalizing revenge porn.  I will analyze these statutes and also discuss the legal challenges legislators face in drafting these laws.

A.  Federal and State Criminal Laws

[31]     Federal and state cyberstalking laws may seem like the best approach to going after revenge porn distributors.  Typically, cyberstalking requires the defendant to have “engaged in behavior or a pattern of conduct with the intent to alarm, abuse, or frighten the victim.”[108]  The federal telecommunications statute, 47 U.S.C. § 223, that is aimed at cyberstalking, prohibits individuals from using any telecommunications to abuse, threaten, or harass any person without revealing their identity.[109]  Federal cyberstalking law is attractive because it prevents revenge porn websites from hiding behind § 230 of the CDA’s shield of protection.  Most states also have similar statutes prohibiting cyberstalking or cyber harassment.[110]  Cyber harassment generally “involves patterns of online behavior that are intended to inflict substantial emotional distress and would cause a reasonable person to suffer substantial emotional distress.”[111]  While some instances of revenge porn are included in this description, there may be substantial hurdles in proving a “pattern” of online behavior if the person only posted one picture and it may also be difficult to show the person posted it with the intent of causing emotional distress.[112]  Thus, while cyberstalking laws may apply in some situations, a criminal law specifically targeting revenge porn situations is better equipped.

[32]     As of 2013, the act of posting or distributing revenge porn was a crime in only two states: New Jersey and California.[113]  Also, Alaska and Texas currently have laws broad enough to apply to distribution of revenge porn; however, an appeals court declared the Texas law unconstitutional.[114]  Fortunately, this legal issue has quickly captured much attention over the past year. In 2014, twenty-seven states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico had legislation addressing revenge porn either introduced or pending, and twelve states enacted laws criminalizing the act of posting revenge porn: Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin.[115]

[33]     New Jersey’s Title 2C: 14-9 is an invasion of privacy law which was originally directed at people who secretly photograph or videotape another person while they are naked or engaged in sexual activity without their consent.[116]  New Jersey’s law was intended to cover “video voyeurs” and was used to prosecute Rutgers University student Dharun Ravi in 2010.[117]  Ravi was found guilty under Title 2C: 14-9 after he secretly set up a webcam to spy on his roommate, Tyler Clementi and then live streamed the video.[118]  Clementi, who was only eighteen years old, committed suicide after finding out the video had been live streamed.[119]  The New Jersey statute reads:

An actor commits a crime of the third degree if, knowing that he is not licensed or privileged to do so, he discloses any photograph, film, videotape, recording or any other reproduction of the image of another person whose intimate parts are exposed or who is engaged in an act of sexual penetration or sexual contact, unless that person has consented to such disclosure.[120]

Although the law was not drafted with the criminalization of revenge porn in mind, it was written broad enough so that it does apply to most revenge porn situations.

[34]     In the fall of 2013, the California legislature passed SB 255, a revenge porn bill introduced by Senator Cannella.[121]  Governor Jerry Brown signed the bill into law on October 1, 2013 and it went into effect immediately.[122]  The law makes posting revenge porn a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.[123]  It specifically provides that:

Except as provided in subdivision (l), every person who commits any of the following acts is guilty of disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor: . . . Any person who photographs or records by any means the image of the intimate body part of parts of another identifiable person, under circumstances where the parties agree or understand the image shall remain private, and the person subsequently distributes the image taken, with the intent to cause serious emotional distress, and the depicted person suffers serious emotional distress.[124]

As written, California’s law does not include pictures the victim took of him or herself, often called a “selfie.”[125]  California’s law contains other concerning loopholes, as well.  For instance, it does not cover anyone who might redistribute the photograph or recording after it has already been taken by someone else because it covers only the person who makes the photograph or recording.[126]  So, the law does not penalize people who steal explicit pictures from someone else’s phones or hackers who obtain these photos by hacking into the victim’s computer or phone.[127]  These situations are not out of the ordinary; when it comes to legal possibilities, California’s law likely will leave many revenge porn victims in the same helpless situation they were in before the bill was passed.  However, Senator Canella introduced a new bill, SB 1255, which broadened the law to include selfies as well.[128]

[35]     Idaho also passed House Bill 563 which amends provisions of Idaho’s existing law relating to the crime of video voyeurism to include the act of sharing pictures or videos of an intimate or private nature shared without consent for purposes other than sexual gratification, including revenge, extortion, or humiliation.[129]  Idaho’s video voyeurism law now states:

A person is guilty of video voyeurism when . . . [h]e either intentionally or with reckless disregard disseminates, publishes or sells or conspires to disseminate, publish or sell any image or images of the intimate areas of another person or persons without the consent of such other person or persons and he knows or reasonably should have known that one (1) or both parties agreed or understood that the images should remain private.[130]

House Bill 563 was reported signed by the Governor on March 19, 2014 and went into effect on July 1, 2014.[131]

[36]     Both Alaska and Texas have existing laws written broad enough to cover revenge porn situations.  Alaska’s existing cyber-harassment law is written broad enough to cover revenge porn situations and was used to charge Joshua P. Hoehne with second-degree harassment for downloading pictures from a former roommate’s computer without permission and creating fake social media accounts for a woman and her sister containing nude pictures of them and sexually explicit captions.[132]  Texas’s improper photography or visual recording law may be broad enough to include distributors of revenge porn; however, the Fourth Court of Appeals in San Antonia, Texas held the statute was unconstitutional in an opinion filed August 30, 2013.[133]

[37]     While fourteen states and arguably Alaska have laws currently criminalizing revenge porn, twenty-seven states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico have considered similar legislation over the past few years.[134]  In 2013, Florida, the home state of Holly Jacobs,[135] tried and failed to pass a revenge porn law.[136]  Florida Representative Tom Goodson sponsored House Bill 787, “Computer or Electronic Device Harassment,” which would have made it illegal to post nude pictures of someone online and tag them with their personal information without their consent.[137]  The wording of this bill would only make it illegal to post the nude picture if the person posting it also tagged the victim.  Thus, the bill did not criminalize the act of posting the nude picture, generally.  However, in 2014, Florida Senator David Simmons introduced another revenge porn bill, Senate Bill 532, which does not include this tagging requirement.[138]  The bill unanimously passed the Senate, but unfortunately did not pass the House and died in committee on May 2, 2014.[139]

[38]     In Virginia, Delegate Robert P. Bell introduced House Bill 326 which, in relevant part, provides:

Any person who, with the intent to coerce, harass, or intimidate, maliciously disseminates or sells any videographic or still image created by any means whatsoever that depicts another person who is totally nude, or in a state of undress so as to expose the genitals, pubic area, buttocks, or female breast, where such person knows or has reason to know that he is not licensed or authorized to disseminate or sell such videographic or still image is guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor.  However, if a person uses services of an Internet service provider, an electronic mail service provider, or any other information service, system, or access software provider that provides or enables computer access by multiple users to a computer server in committing acts prohibited under this section, such provider shall not be held responsible for violating this section for content provided by another person.[140]

House Bill 326 passed both the Senate and the House, was signed into law by Governor Terry McAuliffe on March 31, 2014, and became effective on July 1, 2014.[141]  Other states that have proposed similar legislation in 2014 include Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin.[142]

B.  Challenges for Getting Criminal Revenge Porn Laws Passed

[39]     Revenge porn advocates and legislators face many challenges in getting criminal revenge porn laws passed.  First, it is important these laws are not written too broadly, so they do not violate individuals’ right to free speech under the First Amendment.  On the other hand, it is difficult to write a law broad enough to encompass the majority of revenge porn victims that does not impose unnecessary hurdles regarding the burden of proof.

[40]     Many of the state laws and introduced legislation criminalizing revenge porn have been criticized for being written too broadly and abridging free speech in violation of the First Amendment.[143]  There was some opposition to California’s anti-revenge porn law by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (“EFF”) and the American Civil Liberties Union (“ACLU”) when the law was in its early stages.[144]  As an attorney for the EFF stated, “[f]requently, almost inevitably, statutes that try to do this type of thing overreach . . . [t]he concern is that they’re going to shrink the universe of speech that’s available online.”[145]  However, Mary Anne Franks argues that a carefully crafted revenge porn statute with certain exceptions for lawful activity does not offend the First Amendment.[146]  Further, she notes that laws criminalizing cyber-stalking have not been found to violate the First Amendment, so a well-written law criminalizing revenge porn should not cause problems either.[147]

[41]     Certain types of speech are not protected by the First Amendment and some speech can be regulated without violating the Constitution because it has the tendency to bring about serious harm which outweighs the right to freedom of speech.[148]  The constitutionality of revenge porn laws might be a moot point as some may argue that revenge porn is obscene and should not even qualify as protected speech within the scope of the First Amendment.  In Miller v. California, the guiding case on obscenity, the Court laid out the following test for determining whether material is obscene:

(a) whether “the average person, applying contemporary community standards” would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest . . . (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.[149]

The application of this test in cases involving modern Internet pornography has proven difficult and controversial because it is unclear how courts should identify contemporary community standards.[150]  “Critics debate whether the courts should apply a national standard, a statewide standard, a standard based on smaller community units, an ‘average adult’ standard, or in Internet cases, a cyber-community standard.”[151]  Regardless of the difficulty in applying the Miller test in the age of Internet pornography, revenge porn could arguably qualify as obscenity.  Distributing sexually explicit pictures or videos of a person without their consent is “patently offensive” and many would argue revenge porn “lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”[152]  Thus, revenge porn may be considered obscene unprotected speech.

[42]     Even if revenge porn is not categorized as obscene, it may be considered “indecent” speech that is subject to a slightly lower scrutiny when being analyzed for constitutionality.[153]  In FCC v. Pacifica, the Court held that the content of Pacifica’s radio broadcast was “‘vulgar,’ ‘offensive,’ and ‘shocking’” and noted that “content of that character is not entitled to absolute constitutional protection under all circumstances.”[154]  The Court held the FCC was able to regulate the broadcast for largely two reasons: (1) the indecent material was invading individuals in the privacy of their own home “where the individual’s right to be left alone plainly outweighs the First Amendment rights of an intruder”; and (2) the broadcasting was easily accessible to children.[155]  A similar argument may be made for revenge porn, as these websites are easily accessible to children.  Although it might be difficult to argue these websites are confronting individuals in the privacy of their own home, they are seriously invading the privacy of those whose pictures are being distributed without their consent.

[43]     On the other end of the spectrum, some scholars have criticized California’s law and the proposed law in Florida for being too narrow.  As noted above, in its current form, California’s law does not cover “selfies” and there must be proof the person distributed the picture with the intent to cause serious emotional distress.[156]  Many argue the law takes it too far by requiring the prosecution to prove the defendant intended to inflict serious emotional distress.  Moreover, as previously discussed above, the California law does not reach third parties who did not take the explicit photograph or video themselves, but were still the ones to distribute it on the Internet.[157]  Further, Florida’s proposed legislation would have continued to permit people to post nude photographs without the depicted person’s consent as long as she was not tagged with personal identifying information.[158]  It has proven difficult for many states to strike the right balance between proper protection for the victims of revenge porn and a law that does not improperly restrict free speech.

 

V.  A Federal Law Criminalizing Revenge Porn is Necessary

[44]     The best way to attack revenge porn and prevent people from posting and distributing revenge porn is with a federal law criminalizing the act.[159]  Clearly, the existing civil remedies and criminal laws are inefficient.  Although it seems many states will continue to propose legislation criminalizing this activity, the most effectual way to put a stop to revenge porn would be for Congress to pass a uniform prohibition.  A federal criminal statute would ensure that victims in states that fail to pass such legislation are protected.[160]  Moreover, many revenge porn victims have trouble convincing law enforcement to help them, and a federal criminal law would make sure authorities understand this behavior is against the law and deserves attention.[161]  Additionally, a federal statute criminalizing revenge porn would prevent revenge porn websites from hiding behind the shield of liability provided by § 230 of the CDA.

[45]     Moreover, like most Internet activities, revenge porn often crosses jurisdictional boundaries and involves interstate or international communications.[162]  As Kevin V. Ryan and Mark L. Krotoski state, “The Internet provides the means to communicate with or access computers around the world in real-time, twenty-four hours a day seven days a week.  Taking advantage of the global reach of the Internet, perpetrators may be many time zones away in another jurisdiction or country.”[163]  Thus, although state criminal laws may help in addressing revenge porn, because this activity often involves interstate and international communications and crosses jurisdictional boundaries, a federal law is necessary and would be a more effective solution.

[46]     As discussed above, states have taken different approaches to the criminalization of revenge porn; some passing laws that are too narrow and others passing laws that are too broad.  A carefully crafted, uniform federal law should remedy this issue.  First, the law would need to be broad enough to cover both explicit pictures taken by another person and explicit “selfies.”  This federal law should not make the same mistake as California in leaving out pictures a victim took of him or herself.  Many revenge porn victims did take the pictures or videos of themselves, but did not consent to having them posted on the Internet for the world to access.  Thus, this federal law should prohibit a person from knowingly posting and distributing an explicit photograph or video on the Internet without the depicted person’s consent.  The intent requirement does not need to include intent to cause serious emotional distress, as long as the language clearly states the distributor knew or had reason to know the explicit images were meant to remain private.  There is no need for the federal statute to include proof of a pattern of harassing behavior.  However, in order to circumvent constitutional issues, the law likely should include a requirement of proof the victim suffered some emotional harm.

[47]     In March 2014, California Representative Jackie Speier announced she was preparing to introduce federal legislation criminalizing the distribution of revenge porn.[164]  Franks, who is helping Speier draft the legislation, has stated that the bill would look similar to this model statute:

Whoever knowingly discloses through the mails, or using any means of facility of interstate or foreign commerce or in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce by any means, including a computer, an image of another, identifiable person whose intimate parts are exposed or who is engaged in a sexual at, when the actor knows or should have known that the depicted person has not consented to such disclosure, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.[165]

Representative Speier’s announcement of her plan to introduce this legislation is a step in the right direction.

[48]     A federal criminal ban on the distribution of revenge porn likely would serve as a deterrent and discourage people from posting these pictures in the first place.  If a person knows he could potentially face jail time or a heavy fine, he likely would not be as quick to engage in such an activity.  Further, being indicted on federal criminal charges rather than being sued by one individual likely will carry more weight and be taken more seriously by people engaging in this vindictive behavior.  Also, a federal law criminalizing this activity means victims are represented by the government.  Thus, victims would not have to pay to litigate these lawsuits and would not have to face as much publicity as they would when bringing a civil suit. More importantly, a federal criminal ban on revenge porn would trump § 230 of the CDA, allowing victims to go after the big fish, the revenge porn websites.  Thus, such a law would also discourage people from operating revenge porn websites, period; thus, truly getting at the heart of the problem.

 

VI.  Conclusion

[49]     As technology and pornography continue to mature and push the limits, both consistently present judges, legislators, and legal advocates with difficult legal questions.  The rapid growth of technology and pornography’s recent creation, revenge porn, has brought detrimental effects for many and highlighted a great need for legal action.  Although many states have begun to recognize the seriousness of this issue, and even though there are some existing civil laws that potentially address revenge porn, the most effective way to stop websites and users from posting revenge porn is for Congress to enact a federal criminal law.  A carefully crafted federal law would protect victims, deter violators, and allow victims to go after the actual revenge porn websites themselves, without offending the First Amendment.

 


[1] See Jonathan Coopersmith, Pornography, Technology and Progress, 4 ICON 94 (1998), available at http://berlin.robinperrey.com/imgpo/pornography-technology-and-progress.pdf.

[2] See id.

[3] See Christopher Bonanos, Before Sexting, There Was Polaroid, Atlantic (Oct. 1, 2012, 12:38 PM), http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/10/before-sexting-there-was-polaroid/263082/

[4] Coopersmith, supra note 1, at 102 (“Film did not die—7852 new pornographic films appeared in 1996 compared with 471 Hollywood films—but consumption had moved from adult theatres and sex stores to the more private environments provided by cable TV and the VCR.”).

[5] Peter Johnson, Pornography Drives Technology: Why Not to Censor the Internet, 49 Fed. Comm. L.J. 217, 222 (1996) (emphasis added).

[6] Coopersmith, supra note 1, at 104.

[7] Id.  “The Internet offers nearly free access to pornography uninhibited by previous barriers of time and space.”  Id. at 110.

[8] Id. at 110-11.

[9] See Katie Gant, Note, Crying Over the Cache: Why Technology Has Compromised the Uniform Application of Child Pornography Laws, 81 Fordham L. Rev. 319, 326 (2012) (noting that “[w]ith the advent of [I]nternet technology, child pornography became a new monster”); Nicole A. Poltash, Note, Snapchat and Sexting: A Snapshot of Baring Your Bare Essentials, 19 Rich. J.L. & Tech. 14, ¶ 5 (2013), http://jolt.richmond.edu/v19i4/article14.pdf.

[10] See Coopersmith, supra note 1, at 106 (“In an example of the true democratisation of technology, the development of the Polaroid instant camera and the camcorder allowed people to produce their own pornography free from anyone else seeing their work.”).

[11] More on Sexting and Texting from SIA 3, UptoDate (Feb. 5, 2013), http://blog.match.com/2013/02/05/more-on-sexting-and-texting-from-sia-3/.

[12] See Michelle Dean, The Case for Making Revenge Porn a Federal Crime, Gawker (Mar. 27, 2014, 2:45 PM), http://gawker.com/the-case-for-making-revenge-porn-a-federal-crime-1552861507; State ‘Revenge Porn’ Legislation, Nat’l Conf. St. Legis., http://www.ncsl.org/research/telecommunications-and-information-technology/state-revenge-porn-legislation.aspx (last visited Oct. 15, 2014).  Alaska and Texas also have statutes already on the books that may be broad enough to cover revenge porn situations.  See Dean, supra.  This will be discussed further below.

[13] Id. (noting that bills had been introduced or are pending in at least twenty seven states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico in 2014).

[14] See Doe v. Hofstetter, No. 11-CV-02209-DME-MJW, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 82320 (D. Colo. June 13, 2012) (holding that defendant was guilty of intentional infliction of emotional distress, defamation, and public disclosure of private fact after he posted ex-girlfriend’s nude photographs on twenty-three adult websites with her contact information); Lorelei Laird, Victims Are Taking on ‘Revenge Porn’ Websites for Posting Photos They Didn’t Consent to, ABA J. (Nov. 1, 2013, 4:30 AM), http://www.abajournal.com/mobile/mag_article/victims_are_taking_on_revenge_porn_websites_for_posting_photos_they_didnt_c/ (noting that victims of revenge porn own the copyright of their photos were self-portraits and can send takedown notices under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act).

[15] See, e.g., Mary Anne Franks, Sexual Harassment 2.0, 71 Md. L. Rev. 655, 687-88 (2012); Danielle Citron, Revenge Porn and the Uphill Battle to Pierce Section 230 Immunity (Part II), Concurring Opinions (Jan. 25, 2013), http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2013/01/revenge-porn-and-the-uphill-battle-to-pierce-section-230-immunity-part-ii.html.

[16] See, e.g., Revenge Porn, Urban Dictionary, http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=revenge%20porn (last visited June. 8, 2014).

[17] Alexa Tsoulis-Reay, A Brief History of Revenge Porn, N.Y. Mag. (July 21, 2013), http://nymag.com/news/features/sex/revenge-porn-2013-7/.

[18] Id.

[19] Id.

[20] Jonathan Barrett & Luke Strongman, The Internet, the Law, and Privacy in New Zealand: Dignity with Liberty?, 6 Int’l J. of Comm. 127, 136 (2012).

[21] See Tsoulis-Reay, supra note 17.

[22] See, e.g., Laird, supra note 14.

[23] Danielle Keats Citron & Mary Anne Franks, Criminalizing Revenge Porn, 49 Wake Forest L. Rev. 345, 350-51 (2014) (citation omitted).

[24] Is Anyone Up?, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is_Anyone_Up%3F (last visited June 8, 2014).

[25] Matt Markovich, Revenge Porn Websites Taking Advantage of Weak Privacy Laws, KOMO News (Nov. 21, 2013, 11:53PM), http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Privacy-Laws-Weak-at-Protecting-Nude-Photos-on-Revenge-Porn-Websites-232935541.html.

[26] Laird, supra note 14 (noting that even revenge porn sites “have been accused of hacking victims’ computers or fishing for photos with false personal ads”).

[27] Communications Decency Act of 1996, 47 U.S.C. §§ 230, 560, 561 (1996).

[28] Cheryl B. Preston, What Ifs and Other Alternative Intellectual Property and Cyberlaw Story: The Internet and Pornography: What If Congress and the Supreme Court Had Been Comprised of Techies in 1995-1997?, 2008 Mich. St. L. Rev. 61, 62 (2008).

[29] Reno v. ACLU (Reno I), 521 U.S. 844 (1997) (holding that §§ 223(a) and 223(d) were overbroad and abridged the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment).

[30] See Preston, supra note 28, at 64.

[31] See id. at 74.

[32] Jonathan Coopersmith, Does Your Mother Know What You Really Do?  The Changing Nature and Image of Computer-Based Pornography, 22 Hist. & Tech. 1, 2 (2006).

[33] Shannon Creasy, Note and Comment, Defending Against a Charge of Obscenity in the Internet Age: How Google Searches Can Illuminate Miller’s “Contemporary Community Standards”, 26 Ga. St. U.L. Rev. 1029, 1031 (2010).

[34] See id.

[35] See Preston, supra note 28, at 83 (reporting that in one month during 2005, over seventy-one million people—forty-two percent of the Internet audience—viewed Internet pornography).

[36] See Preston, supra note 28, at 85.

[37] See Preston, supra note 28, at 85.

[38] See Alex Saltarin, US Leads Smartphone Porn-watching Countries List, Tech Times (Dec.24, 2013, 11:21 AM), http://www.techtimes.com/articles/2229/20131224/us-leads-smartphone-porn-watching-countries-list.htm.

[39] See id.

[40] See Lauren Effron, The Appeal of Amateur Porn, ABC News (Oct. 14, 2011, 3:37 PM), http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2011/10/14/the-appeal-of-amateur-porn/.

[41] Id.

[42] Obviously, there are other factors that aided in the rise of revenge porn such as the actual spitefulness of the jilted ex-lovers that decide to post the images, but this comment will not go into this aspect of the trend.

[43] See Patt Morrison, ‘Revenge Porn’ May Soon Be a Crime in California, L.A. Times (Aug. 26, 2013, 11:46 AM), http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-revenge-porn-should-it-be-a-crime-20130826,0,2875247.story.

[44] See id.

[45] See id.

[46] Natalie Webb, Revenge Porn by the Numbers, End Revenge Porn (Jan. 3, 2014),http://www.endrevengeporn.org/revenge-porn-infographic/.

[47] See Citron & Franks, supra note 23, at 351.

[48] See id..

[49] See id..

[50] Mary Anne Franks, Criminalizing Revenge Porn: A Quick Guide, End Revenge Porn, http://www.endrevengeporn.org/guide-to-legislation/ (last visited Apr. 26, 2014).

[51] See Citron & Franks, supra note 23, at 352.

[52] See, e.g., Jessica Roy, The Battle Over Revenge Porn: Can Hunter Moore, the Web’s Vilest Entrepreneur, Be Stopped?, BetaBeat (Dec. 4, 2012, 7:46 PM), http://betabeat.com/2012/12/the-battle-over-revenge-porn-can-hunter-moore-the-webs-vilest-entrepreneur-be-stopped/.

[53] See id.

[54] See id.

[55] See id.

[56] See id.

[57] See Memphis Barker, “Revenge Porn” Is No Longer a Niche Activity Which Victimises Only Celebrities—The Law Must Intervene, Indep. (May 19, 2013), http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/revenge-porn-is-no-longer-a-niche-activity-which-victimises-only-celebrities–the-law-must-intervene-8622574.html.

[58] Kashmir Hill, Revenge Porn with a Facebook Twist, Forbes (July 6, 2011, 4:54 PM), http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2011/07/06/revenge-porn-with-a-facebook-twist/.

[59] See id.

[60] See Adrian Chen, Internet’s Sleaziest Pornographer Calls It Quits: ‘I’m Done with Looking at Little Kids Naked All Day’, Gawker (Apr. 19, 2012, 4:50 PM), http://gawker.com/5903486/internets-sleaziest-pornographer-calls-it-quits-im-done-with-looking-at-little-kids-naked-all-day/all.  In a phone interview, Moore talked about how the influx of child pornography submissions became too much with which for him to deal.  See also Drew Guarini, Hunter Moore, Is Anyone Up Founder, Says New Website Will Be ‘Scariest on the Internet’, Huffington Post (Aug. 24, 2012, 12:26 PM), http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/23/hated-internet-star-hunte_n_1826061.html.

[61] See Roy, supra note 52.

[62] See Abby Rogers, The Guy Behind Two “Revenge Porn” Sites Says the Government Protects His Work, Bus. Insider (Nov. 29, 2012, 4:43 PM), http://www.businessinsider.com/isanyoneupcom-naked-pictures-are-back-2012-11.

[63] See Roy, supra note 52.

[64] See Rogers, supra note 62.

[65] See Jessica Roy, Revenge-Porn King Hunter Moore Indicted on Federal Charges, Time (Jan. 23, 2014), http://time.com/1703/revenge-porn-king-hunter-moore-indicted-by-fbi/.

[66] See id.

[67] See id.

[68] See Kashmir Hill, How Revenge Porn King Hunter Moore Was Taken Down, Forbes (Jan. 24, 2014, 11:17 AM), http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/01/24/how-revenge-porn-king-hunter-moore-was-taken-down/.

[69] See The Associated Press, California: Man Is Charged in ‘Revenge Porn’ Case, N.Y. Times (Dec. 10, 2013), http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/11/us/california-man-is-charged-in-revenge-porn-case.html?_r=0.

[70] See id.; “Revenge Porn” Website Gets Calif. Man Charged with Extortion, CBS News (Dec. 11, 2013, 4:49 PM), http://www.cbsnews.com/news/calif-man-charged-with-extortion-through-revenge-porn-website/.

[71] See Don Thompson, Court Date Set for Kevin Bollaert in Revenge Porn Website Case, Huffington Post (Dec. 12, 2013, 2:15 AM), http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/12/kevin-bollaert-revenge-porn_n_4432097.html.

[72] See id.

[73] Joe Silver, “Revenge Porn” Site Creators Hit With $385,000 Judgment, Ars Technica (Mar.19, 2014, 1:48 PM), http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/03/revenge-porn-site-creators-hit-with-385000-judgment/.

[74] Citron and Franks also give a detailed analysis of the insufficiency of civil actions in addressing revenge porn.  See Citron & Franks, supra note 23, at 357–61.

[75] See Sarah Jeong, Revenge Porn Is Bad.  Criminalizing It Is Worse, Wired (Oct. 28, 2013, 9:30 AM), http://www.wired.com/2013/10/why-criminalizing-revenge-porn-is-a-bad-idea/; Laird, supra note 14.

[76] See Jeong, supra note 75.

[77] See 47 U.S.C. § 230 (2006); Dean, supra note 12.

[78] See Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 512 (2012).

[79] See Doe v. Hofstetter, No. 11-CV-02209-DME-MJW, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 82320 (D. Colo. June 13, 2012).

[80] See, e.g., Daniel Zharkovsky, “If Man Will Strike, Strike Through the Mask”: Striking Through Section 230 Defenses Using the Tort of Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress, 44 Colum. J. L. & Soc. Probs. 193, 227 (2010).

[81] See id. at 228.

[82] See Nancy S. Kim, Web Site Proprietorship and Online Harassment, 2009 Utah L. Rev. 993, 1006 (2009).

[83] See id. at 1007 (citing Restatement (Second) of Torts §§ 558–59 (1977)).

[84] See id. at 1008-09.

[85] See id. at 1010.

[86] See Citron & Franks, supra note 23, at 358.

[87] See Kim, supra note 82, at 1008.  “On the Internet, however, widespread distribution is available to those without substantial financial resources.  Consequently, even where a plaintiff prevails in a civil action against an online harasser, the odds are high that the plaintiff will not be able to recover significant damages.”  Id.

[88] See Derek E. Bambauer, Exposed 98 Minn. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2014) (manuscript at 4-5) (on file with Univ. of Ariz. James E. Rogers College of Law, Discussion Paper No. 13-39), available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2315583.

[89] See Kim, supra note 82, at 1010.

[90] See 47 U.S.C. §230(c)(1) (2006).

[91] See Zharkovsky, supra note 80, at 198. “One such problem concerned whether a proprietor of an online message board could be liable for defamatory statements posted on the board, even though the statements were made by an independent third party.”  Id. at 197.

[92] See id. at 198-99.

[93] 47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(1).

[94] 47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(2)(A).

[95] 47 U.S.C. § 230(e)(1)-(3) (emphasis added).

[96] See Fair Hous. Council v. Roommates.com, LLC, 521 F.3d 1157, 1174-75 (9th Cir. 2008) (en banc).

[97] See id. at 1162.

[98] See id. at 1164.

[99] See id. at 1166.

[100] See id.

[101] See Laird, supra note 14.

[102] See 17 U.S.C. § 512; Laird, supra note 14.

[103] 47 U.S.C. § 230(e)(2).

[104] See Laird, supra note 14.

[105] See id.

[106] Amanda Levendowski, Our Best Weapon Against Revenge Porn: Copyright Law?, Atlantic (Feb. 4, 2014, 1:03PM), http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/02/our-best-weapon-against-revenge-porn-copyright-law/283564/.

[107] See Haimy Assefa, Massachusetts Court Says ‘Upskirt’ Photos Are Legal, CNN (Mar. 6, 2014, 7:33 AM), http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/05/us/massachusetts-upskirt-photography/.  The Massachusetts court held it was legal to secretly photographs underneath a person’s clothing when the person is not nude or partially nude.  See id.  The court ruled,

In sum, we interpret the phrase, “a person who is . . . partially nude,” in the same way that the defendant does, namely, to mean a person who is partially clothed but who has one or more of the private parts of body exposed in plain view at the time that the putative defendant secretly photographs her.

Commonwealth v. Robertson, 5 N.E.3d 522, 528 (Mass. 2014).

[108] See Kim, supra note 81, at 1008.

[109] See 47 U.S.C. § 223 (2006).

[110] State Cyberstalking and Cyberharassment Laws, Nat’l Conf. St. Legis. (Dec. 5, 2013), http://www.ncsl.org/research/telecommunications-and-information-technology/cyberstalking-and-cyberharassment-laws.aspx.

[111] David Gray et. al., Fighting Cybercrime After United States v. Jones, 103 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 745, 748 (2013).

[112] See Franks, supra note 50.

[113] State ‘Revenge Porn’ Legislation, supra note 12.

[114] See id.; Dean, supra note 12.

[115] See generally State ‘Revenge Porn’ Legislation, supra note 12.

[116] N.J. Stat. Ann. § 2C:14-9 (West 2014).

[117] See Suzanne Choney, ‘Revenge Porn’ Law in California Could Pave Way for Rest of Nation, NBC News (Sept. 3, 2013, 4:34 PM), http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/revenge-porn-law-california-could-pave-way-rest-nation-f8C11022538.

[118] See id.

[119] See id.

[120] N.J. Stat. Ann. § 2C:14-9(c).

[121] S. 255, 2013-2014 Reg. Sess. (Cal. 2013) (enacted as Cal. Penal Code § 647(j)(4)(A)).

[122] See Jerry Brown Signs Anti-Revenge Porn Bill, Huffington Post (Oct. 2, 2013, 10:18 AM), http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/02/jerry-brown-revenge-porn_n_4030175.html.

[123] See id.

[124] § 647(j)(4)(A).

[125] See id.

[126] See § 647(j)(4)(A); Eric Goldman, California’s New Law Shows It’s Not Easy To Regulate Revenge Porn, Forbes (Oct. 8, 2013, 12:03 PM), http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericgoldman/2013/10/08/californias-new-law-shows-its-not-easy-to-regulate-revenge-porn/.

[127] See § 647(j)(4)(A); Goldman supra note 125.

[128] See S. 1255, 2013-2014 Reg. Sess. (Cal. 2014).

[129] H.R. 563, 2014 2d Reg. Sess. (Id. 2014), available at http://www.legislature.idaho.gov/legislation/2014/H0563.htm.

[130] Id.

[131] See id.

[132] Alaska Stat. § 11.61.120 (2013); Jerzy Shedlock, Anchorage Man Charged with Harassment After Creating Fake Facebook Accounts, Alaska Dispatch (Jan. 4, 2014), http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/20140104/anchorage-man-charged-harassment-after-creating-fake-facebook-accounts.

[133] Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 21.15(b)(1) (West 2011); ex parte Thompson, 414 S.W.3d 872, 874 (Tex. App. 2013)  (holding section 21.15(b)(1) of the Texas Penal Code unconstitutional for restricting protected speech by regulating an individual’s right to photograph and to have certain thoughts).

[134] See supra text accompanying notes 112-114.

[135] See generally supra note 43 and accompanying text.

[136] See H.R. 787, 2013 Leg., Reg. Sess. (Fl. 2013), available at http://www.myfloridahouse.gov/Sections/Bills/billsdetail.aspx?BillId=50026.

[137] See id.

[138] See S. 532, 2014 Leg., Reg. Sess. (Fl. 2014), available at http://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2014/0532.

[139] See id.

[140] H.R. 326, 2014 Leg. Reg. Sess. (Va. 2014), available at http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?141+sum+HB326.

[141] See id.

[142] See State ‘Revenge Porn’ Legislation, supra note 12.

[143] See Laird, supra note 14.

[144] See id.

[145] Steven Nelson, Federal ‘Revenge Porn’ Bill Will Seek to Shrivel Booming Internet Fad, US News (Mar. 26, 2014), http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/03/26/federal-revenge-porn-bill-will-seek-to-shrivel-booming-internet-fad; Dean, supra note 12.

[146] See Franks, supra note 50, at 2.

[147] See Dean, supra note 12.

[148] See FCC v. Pacifica Found., 438 U.S. 726 (1978) (holding the Federal Communications Commission could regulate “indecent speech” on the radio during hours when children are likely listening); Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15, 19 (1971).  “[T]he First and Fourteenth Amendments have never been thought to give absolute protection to every individual to speak whenever or wherever he pleases or to use any form of address in any circumstances that he chooses.”  Id.

[149] Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15, 24 (1973) (citation omitted).

[150] See Creasy, supra note 33 at 1033.

[151] See Creasy, supra note 33 at 1040.

[152] Miller, 413 U.S. at 24; Citron & Franks, supra note 23, at 35.

[153] Pacifica, 438 U.S. at 732.

[154] Id. at 747.

[155] Id. at 748; see also Rowan v. Post Office Dept., 397 U.S. 728 (1970).

[156] See Mark Melnicoe, California Crackdown on ‘Revenge Porn’ in Brown’s Hands, Bloomberg (Sep. 11, 2013, 2:55 PM), http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-11/california-crackdown-on-revenge-porn-in-brown-s-hands.html.

[157] See supra note 120-127 and accompanying text.

[158] See H.R. 787, 2013 Leg., Reg. Sess. (Fl. 2013).

[159] Citron and Franks also conclude that the criminalization of revenge porn is necessary; however, I am arguing specifically for a federal law criminalizing revenge porn.  See Citron & Franks, supra note 23, at 390.

[160] See Dean, supra note 12.

[161] See id.

[162] See Robert L. Ullmann and David L. Ferrera, Crime on the Internet, 42 B.B.J. 4, 4 (1998) (stating most Internet crime involves interstate or international communications); Anne E. Hawley, Taking Spam Out of Your Cyberspace Diet: Common Law Applied to Bulk Unsolicited Advertising Via Electronic Mail, 66 UMKC L. Rev. 381, 385 (1997) (discussing the inadequacy of state legislation in controlling spamming problems because Internet activities cross jurisdictional boundaries).

[163] Kevin V. Ryan & Mark L. Krotoski, Symposium, Big Brother in the 21st Century?: Reforming the Electronic Communications Privacy Act: Caution Advised: Avoid Undermining the Legitimate Needs of Law Enforcement to Solve Crimes Involving the Internet in Amending the Electronic Communications Act, 47 U.S. F. L. Rev. 291, 291–92 (2012).

[164] See Nelson, supra note 137.

[165] See Franks, supra note 50, at 4.

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