In a revised en banc opinion (PDF), the Ninth Circuit overturned guidelines promulgated last year involving seizure of computer records from a company allegedly providing steroids to professional baseball players. The en banc opinion relaxes the previously issued federal procedures governing issuance and execution of search warrants and subpoenas for electronically stored information. Federal prosecutors, many of whom were being denied “any new warrants to search computers” under these stringent standards (as alleged in a brief in support of rehearing en banc (PDF)), will benefit from the relaxed guidelines. However, some privacy advocates (including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Electronic Privacy Information Center) worry the relaxed standard for electronic search, which now includes only unbinding privacy protections, will significantly lessen computer users’ Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches of their data.
This case involves a 2002 federal investigation into the Bay Area Lab Cooperative (“Balco”). The federal government suspected Balco of supplying professional baseball players with steroids. A collective bargaining agreement between the Major League Baseball Players Association (“MLBPA”) and Major League Baseball (“MLB”) subjected players to suspicionless, but strictly anonymous and confidential, drug testing for banned substances over the course of one year. Comprehensive Drug Testing, Inc. (“CDT”), an independent business , administered the program and maintained lists of the results. Quest Lab Diagnostics, Inc. (“Quest”) performed the actual testing. In the course of the Balco investigation, federal authorities learned of ten players who tested positive. The government first secured a subpoena in the Northern District of California for all “drug testing records and specimens” pertaining to MLP players in CDT’s databases (CDT and MLB moved to quash the subpoena; the government issued new subpoenas in response). The government also obtained a warrant, in the Central District of California, which was more limited in scope than the subpoena. This warrant was limited to the ten players about whom the government had probable cause regarding their illegal drug use. However, in executing the warrant, the government “seized and promptly reviewed the drug testing records for hundreds of players in Major League Baseball (and a many other people).” The government obtained this information by seizing a directory of testing data called the Tracey directory. Finally, the government also obtained a warrant, from the District of Nevada, for the urine samples in Quest’s drug-testing facilities.