dialing information, some of which also constitutes
contents.”43
The decision of the Surveillance Court is instructive in
several ways relevant to our analysis here. The first of these is
that, to the extent that the statutory definitions and conceptual
categories of content and routing information overlap,
Congress expressly contemplated the possibility of such an
overlap. For the reasons stated by the Surveillance Court, we
are persuaded that, under the surveillance laws, “dialing,
routing, addressing, and signaling information” may also be
“content.”
Second, the Surveillance Court takes the position that
queried URLs can be content as well as routing information,
for instance in the case of URLs that reproduce search engine
inquiries. Though some district courts have held that a URL
is never content, the Surveillance Court decision is part of a
growing chorus that some, if not most, queried URLs do
contain content. In In re Zynga Privacy Litigation, the Ninth
Circuit took the position that queried URLs are content if, but
only if, they reproduce words from a search engine query.44
43
Id. at 33. As the Southern District of Texas has explained,
“‘[p]ost-cut-through dialed digits’ are any numbers dialed
from a telephone after the call is initially setup or ‘cutthrough.’” In re Application of the U.S., 441 F. Supp. 2d 816,
818 (S.D. Tex. 2006). “Sometimes these digits transmit real
information, such as bank account numbers, Social Security
numbers, prescription numbers, and the like.” Id.
44
750 F.3d 1098, 1108-09 (9th Cir. 2014) (“[A] user’s
request to a search engine for specific information could
23