18 USC § 2702, part of the Stored Communications Act, is one of those laws you rely on every day but you may have never heard of before. Internet communications and storage providers are prohibited by law from disclosing the contents of your online accounts. Think about the truly private content you store online, such as your emails, photos, text messages, and other communications. Section 2702 is basically an online privacy wall for all of this storage. Your provider may not share the contents of your private account with others unless there is a clear exception to the regulations, such as a government search warrant.
Or so everyone thinks.
On July 23, 2024, the California Court of Appeals issued a surprising ruling Snap, Inc. v. High Court (Pina)believe that SCA is not applicable to most remotely stored online messages. The court explained that the privacy provisions of the law do not apply if the provider has the right to access customer data for its own business purposes. The court held that the Section 2702 disclosure prohibition only applies if the company does not have access to a user’s account beyond what is necessary to provide storage and processing. The court then applied that standard to the content at issue in the case (a Facebook account, an Instagram account, and a Snapchat account), finding that Section 2702(a) did not prohibit their disclosure.
The case arose out of a criminal complaint in which the defendants sought to force the company to hand over user messages from victims’ accounts. Defendant Adrian Pina was charged with murdering his brother Samuel. Samuel allegedly has accounts on Instagram, Snapchat and other possible providers. To help prepare his defense, the defendant wanted the contents of his brother’s account. To this end, his lawyers issued subpoenas to Snap (which operates Snapchat) and Meta (which operates Facebook and Instagram), demanding the disclosure of account content.
However, Snap and Meta declined to provide account content, citing the privacy bar under § 2702. That’s where the new ruling comes in: An appeals court rejected Snap and Meta’s arguments, ordering them to comply with the subpoenas on the grounds that the Section 2702 privacy wall does not apply to Instagram accounts or Snapchat accounts, and perhaps many accounts.
I hope this isn’t the end of the story.
I have joined the legal team representing Snap. We have filed this petition for review asking the California Supreme Court to review the Court of Appeals’ decision and reject its reasoning. We hope the court will restore Section 2702 to its proper role in protecting the privacy of everyone’s online accounts. Meta has also filed a petition for review, which you can read here .
Since I serve as Snap’s legal counsel, I do not intend to blog about this case again. But I did want to flag this case for interested readers.
