Surveillance Court read this to mean that, for purposes of
federal surveillance law, information may well serve both a
routing function and a content function. Noting the breadth of
the statutory descriptions of routing information and
“content,” the Surveillance Court concluded that routing
information and “content” are not mutually exclusive
categories, but rather ones that Congress expressly
contemplated to be occasionally coextensive.40 Proceeding to
identify exemplary areas where routing information and
“content” overlap, the Surveillance Court pointed, “in
particular,” to URL queries that involve reproduction of a
search phrase entered by a user into a search engine.41
Quoting the District of Massachusetts, the Surveillance Court
explained that, “if a user runs a search using an [i]nternet
search engine, the ‘search phrase would appear in the URL
after the first forward slash’ as part of the addressing
information, but would also reveal contents, i.e., the
‘“substance” and “meaning” of the communication . . . that
the user is conducting a search for information on a particular
topic.’”42 For an example from another context, the court
pointed to post-cut-through digits in the phone context “as
40
Id. at 31.
41
Id. at 32.
42
Id. at 32 (final alteration in original) (quoting In re
Application of the U.S., 396 F. Supp. 2d 45, 49 (D. Mass.
2005)).
22