Over on FourthAmendment.com, John Wesley Hall notes this case in the Northern District of New York:
In a child porn case, defendant can’t show a reasonable expectation of privacy in images in his social media account. “For example, Defendant has not attested as to how he used the social media accounts, what if any privacy settings he employed on the ESPs, whether he read and understood the Terms of Service and Community Standards, and whether or not he believed his communications were public, private, or subject to monitoring. Thus, there is no factual basis to conclude that he had a subjective expectation of privacy.” “Second, the Court finds that Defendant has failed to show that he had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the images and videos at issue. While Defendant asserts that his expectation of privacy was reasonable, he has not provided any supporting evidence to suggest that society would agree.” United States v. Tennant, 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 192180 (N.D.N.Y. Oct. 10, 2023).
This surprised me because I thought the first thing would be that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in child pornography regardless of whether it is in an online account or a home storage device or whatever. Wouldn’t it have been enough to just address that? Maybe the court wanted to have an opportunity to rule on the social media account claim?