Page 1
Court of Appeal:
Social Media Outfits Must Disclose to Court Stored Data
Opinion Says Companies That Operate Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat Must Comply With Subpoena Served By Lawyers for an Alleged Murderer; Holds That Stored Communications Act Does Not Bar Discovery
By a MetNews Staff Writer
A man accused of murdering his brother might be granted access to postings by the deceased on social media that are now not publicly available but are stored by the providers of the services—but the subpoenaed materials must be turned over to the judge, for an in camera inspection, to the defendant, as the trial court had ordered, Div. One of the Fourth District Court of Appeal held yesterday.
Subpoenas had been served on Meta, which runs Facebook and Instagram, and Snap, which operates Snapchat. Defendant Adrian Pina wants copies of posts by decedent Samuel Pina for the two-year period prior to his death on Dec. 19, 2021 in order to demonstrate his violent propensities.
Presiding Justice Judith McConnell authored the opinion which says that San Diego Superior Court Judge properly found good cause to order disclosure although it should have been to the court, as required by Penal Code §1326(d), and rejects the contention of Snap and Meta that the federal Stored Communications Act (“SCA”) insulates the stored images from discovery.
SCA Doesn’t Apply
“[W]e conclude that the companies’ ability to access and use their customers’ information takes them outside the strictures of the Act,” she said.
As to good cause, McConnell wrote:
“The evidence submitted by Pina in support of his opposition to the motion to quash showed a photograph of Samuel with the gun used in the shooting, suggesting that Samuel’s social media accounts might contain similar material that could support Pina’s defense, either if he acted in self-defense during an altercation with his brother or to show that Samuel had a violent character. Samuel’s girlfriend, in fact, stated that she took a picture of Samuel holding a gun that was posted on Snapchat. These facts supported the court’s finding that the requested material could be relevant to Pina’s defense and could contain admissible evidence about Samuel’s character.”
Requirement of SCA
The SCA bars an electronic communication service (“ECS”) “from knowingly divulging to any person or entity the contents of a communication while in ‘electronic storage’…and prohibits RCS’s from knowingly divulging the contents of any communication ‘which is carried or maintained on that service.’ ”
However, the presiding justice noted, the SCA defines “electronic storage” as the “temporary, intermediate storage of a wire or electronic communication incidental to the electronic transmission thereof” or “any storage of such communication by an electronic communication service for purposes of backup protection of such communication.
Storage by Snap and Meta was for that reason, McConnell acknowledged, but there was also another objective: use of the data for “their own business purposes.” She pointed out that the companies, through their user agreements, secured the permission of users to access the data in order to direct targets ads to them.
Sole Purpose
The SCA specifies, she said, that the bar on disclosure applies only where retention of data is “solely for the purpose of providing storage or computer processing services” to the user. McConnell declared:
“[T]he underlying policy purpose of the SCA, to give privacy protections to the users of ECS providers who intend for their communication to be private, is belied where, as here, the users have given the providers authorization to access and use their content for their own business purposes….This dual purpose brings the content outside the SCA’s plain definition of ECS provider because the content is held and used by Snap and Meta for their own profit-driven purposes.”
McConnell observed that the present writ proceeding “presents a question of first impression that was raised but not decided by the California Supreme Court” in its 2020 decision in Facebook, Inc. v. Superior Court: whether social media companies which “access their customer’s data for their own business purposes” come under the SCA. She recited that then-Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye (now president and CEO of the Public Policy Institute of California), in a concurring opinion, “asked our state’s lower courts to address” the issue.
The case is Snap v. Superior Court (Pina), 2024 S.O.S. 2478.
Copyright 2024, Metropolitan News Company