In re Grand Jury Subpoena for: [Redacted]@ yahoo.com

ORDER DENYING MOTION PURSUANT TO 18 U.S.C. § 2705 (b)

The Stored Communications Act authorizes a court to prohibit providers of electronic communications services from disclosing the existence of a grand jury subpoena. Before the court is an application from the United States for just such an order to Yahoo! Inc. But rather than requesting that Yahoo! be gagged for 60 days, 90 days or some other fixed period, the government wants Yahoo! gagged “until further order of the Court.” Because such an indefinite order would amount to an undue prior restraint of Yahoo!’s First Amendment right to inform the public of its role in searching and seizing its information, the court DENIES the government’s application.

I.

Among its products, Yahoo! offers web-based email. Users may sign up for an email account at yahoo.com. After the government came to learn that one particular account may have information relevant to an ongoing grand jury investigation, 1 it served Yahoo! with a grand jury subpoena. The subpoena requests various customer and subscriber account information for the account of interest. As is often the case with such requests, the government informed Yahoo! that it need not…