United States v. Ackerman’s Empirical Analysis
831 F.3d 1292 · 2016
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 5 district · 7 state decisions
Appellate journey
reviewedthe decision below (from Kansas District Court)
Relationships
Applies 18 U.S.C. § 2252A (§ 101 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996) · 18 U.S.C. § 2258A · 18 U.S.C. § 2258B · 18 U.S.C. § 3056 (Presidential Protection Assistance Act of 1976) · 42 U.S.C. § 16961 · 42 U.S.C. § 16985 · 42 U.S.C. § 5771 · 42 U.S.C. § 5773
Relies on Katz v. United States · Ornelas v. United States · United States v. Place · United States v. Jacobsen · Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives' Assn.
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 50 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Congress's statutes don't require NCMEC to open and view email and attachments like Mr. Ackerman's. But everyone accepts that Congress has authorized and funded NCMEC to do just that. And everyone accepts that Congress enabled NCMEC to review Mr. Ackerman's email by excepting [NCMEC] from the myriad laws banning the knowing receipt, possession, and viewing of child pornography. Nothing about NCMEC's actions could possibly have come as a surprise.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“any doubt NCMEC's search of the email itself quite easily 'could [have] disclose[d]' information previously unknown to the government besides whether the one attachment contained contraband.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Yes, AOL ran a search that suggested a hash value match between one attachment to Mr. Ackerman's email and an image AOL employees had previously identified as child pornography. But AOL never opened the email itself. Only NCMEC did that, and in at least this way exceeded rather than repeated AOL's private search. Neither is there any doubt NCMEC's search of the email itself quite easily "could [have] disclose[d]" information previously unknown to the government besides whether the one attachment contained contraband. Indeed, when NCMEC opened Mr. Ackerman's email it could have learned any number of private and protected facts, for (again) no one before us disputes that an email is a virtual container, capable of storing all sorts of private and personal details, from correspondence to other private (and perfectly legal) images, video or audio files, and beyond. And we know, too, that this particular container did contain three additional attachments, the content of which AOL and NCMEC knew nothing about before NCMEC opened them too. As far as anyone knew at the time, they could have revealed virtually any kind of noncontraband information to the prying eye.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.