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Utah Supreme Court weighs whether state officers circumvented Data Privacy Act by using federal subpoenas
Summary
At oral argument in State v. Andress, defense counsel argued Clearfield officers bypassed Utah's Data Privacy Act by obtaining federal administrative subpoenas for TextNow and Snapchat records instead of the state court order the statute requires; the State countered that federal subpoenas obtained through an FBI task force were valid and constitutional. The court took the case under advisement.
The Utah Supreme Court heard competing views Monday over whether state law enforcement violated the Utah Data Privacy Act by using federal administrative subpoenas to obtain subscriber records in State v. Andress.
Defense counsel, who identified themselves in the record as Sharice Bukalski and Emily Adams for defendant Dustin Andress, told the justices the case is "very simple, clear cut" under the statute: when a Utah law enforcement agent seeks subscriber or customer information from an electronic communication service provider, the Act requires prosecutor review and a Utah court order under section 77-22-2.5, and evidence obtained in violation of those procedures must be excluded under section 105. Bukalski argued Officer Carlson, a Clearfield Police Department member of a joint FBI task force, used the federal subpoena route instead of the mandatory state process and thereby triggered exclusion of the records and all derivative…
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