bear functional analogues to this process, in that different
portions of a queried URL may serve to convey different
messages to different audiences. For instance, the domain
name portion of the URL—everything before the “.com”—
instructs a centralized web server to direct the user to a
particular website, but post-domain name portions of the
URL are designed to communicate to the visited website
which webpage content to send the user.49
As stated above, we agree with the Surveillance Court
that routing information and content are not mutually
exclusive categories. And between the information revealed
by highly detailed URLs and their functional parallels to postcut-through digits, we are persuaded that—at a minimum—
some queried URLs qualify as content.50 Indeed, the
49
See generally Jonathan Mayer, Web Browsing (Under the
Pen Register Act and Wiretap Act), (Nov. 28, 2014).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vFha-af7GE
50
We need not make a global determination as to what is
content, and why, in the context of queried URLs. Lack of
consensus, the complexity and rapid pace of change
associated with the delivery of modern communications, and
the facileness of direct analogy to mail and telephone cases
counsel the utmost care in considering what is, and what is
not, “content” in the context of web queries. Indeed, when it
comes to differentiating content from non-content, Professor
Kerr describes queried URLs as “the most difficult and
discussed case.” Orin S. Kerr, Applying the Fourth
Amendment to the Internet: A General Approach, 62 Stan. L.
Rev. 1005, 1030 n. 93 (2010); see also Orin S. Kerr, Internet
Surveillance Law after the USA Patriot Act: The Big Brother
that Isn’t, 97 Nw. U. L. Rev. 607, 644-48 (2003); cf. Tokson,
26