“warrant,” Congress intended the SCA warrant procedure to function like��a traditional
subpoena. We see no reason to believe that Congress intended to jettison the centuries
of law requiring the issuance and performance of warrants in specified, domestic
locations, or to replace the traditional warrant with a novel instrument of international
application.
The government nonetheless urges that the law of subpoenas relied on by the
magistrate judge requires a subpoena’s recipient to produce documents no matter
where located, and that this aspect of subpoena law should be imported into the SCA’s
warrant provisions. The government argues that “subpoenas, orders, and warrants are
equally empowered to obtain records . . . through a disclosure requirement directed at a
service provider.” Gov’t Br. at 18–19. It further argues that disclosure in response to an
SCA warrant should not be read to reach only U.S.‐located documents, but rather all
records available to the recipient. Id. at 26–27.
In this, the government rests on our 1983 decision in Marc Rich. There, we
permitted a grand jury subpoena issued in a tax evasion investigation to reach the
overseas business records of a defendant Swiss commodities trading corporation. The
Marc Rich Court clarified that a defendant subject to the personal jurisdiction of a
subpoena‐issuing grand jury could not “resist the production of [subpoenaed]
documents on the ground that the documents are located abroad.” 707 F.2d at 667. The
federal court had subject‐matter jurisdiction over the foreign defendant’s actions
pursuant to the “territorial principle,” which allows governments to punish an
individual for acts outside their boundaries when those acts are “intended to produce
and do produce detrimental effects within it.” Id. at 666. In investigating such a case,
the Court concluded, the grand jury necessarily had authority to obtain evidence
related to the foreign conduct, even when that evidence was located abroad. Id. at 667.
For that reason, as long as the Swiss corporation was subject to the grand jury’s
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