NJ- Supreme Court rules Internet user has right to privacy

4-22-2008 New Jersey:

The state Supreme Court ruled today that under the New Jersey Constitution an Internet user has the right to privacy in the subscriber information maintained by the individual's Internet service provider.

Ruling in the case of Shirley Reid, a Cape May County woman who was charged with hacking into her employer's computer system after police obtained her identity from Comcast by using a municipal court subpoena, the high court unanimously held law enforcement had the right to investigate her but should have, instead, used a grand jury subpoena.

The court upheld a state appeals court ruling that overturned the conviction for second-degree computer theft.

Reid was investigated after her employer, Jersey Diesel of Lower Township, was notified by a business supplier in August 2004 that someone had accessed and changed both the company's multi-digit numbers that make up an IP address and its password and created a non-existent shipping address. When the owner, Timothy Wilson, asked Comcast for the IP address of the person who made the changes so he could identify the individual, the Internet provider declined to so without a subpoena.

Wilson suspected Reid, an employee who had been on disability leave, could have made the changes. Reid had returned to work on the day the computer changes were made, argued with Wilson and left.

The Lower Township police obtained a municipal court subpoena and served it on Comcast. Comcast then identified Reid, her address and telephone number, type of service provided, email address, IP numbers, account number and method of payment. In February 2005, a Cape May grand jury returned an indictment charging Reid with computer theft. In state Superior Court in Cape May Courthouse, Reid successfully moved to have the evidence suppressed. The court identified several flaws in the subpoena process.

"... The court holds that citizens have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the subscriber information they provide to Internet service providers,'' the Supreme Court held. "Accordingly, the motion to suppress by Reid was properly granted because the police used a deficient municipal subpoena. Law enforcement officials can obtain subscriber information by serving a grand jury subpoena on an Internet service provider without notice to the subscriber. The state (law enforcement) may seek to reacquire the information with a proper grand jury subpoena because records of the information existed independently of the faulty process used by police, and the conduct of the police did not affect the information.''

Reid's attorney's have sought to establish a requirement that Internet users be informed when their identities are the subject of subpoenas so they can mount a challenge in court. ..more.. by Tom Hester/The Star-Ledger