Law Commons^™

Preservation Letters And Fourth Amendment Seizures: A Response To Professor Kerr, Michael L. Levy

Saint Louis University Law Journal

The Stored Communications Act (18 U.S.C. § 2701 et seq.) requires an Internet Service Provider to preserve the contents of a user account upon receiving a request from a government agency. The maximum period of preservation is 180 days. However, the government agency cannot get access to the copy, unless it presents proper legal process, usually a search warrant. During this time, the user has complete access to their account. In a recent article, Professor Orin Kerr has advanced a thesis that copying pursuant to the government’s preservation requests under the Stored Communications Act is a Fourth Amendment seizure. This …