MEMORANDUM OPINION
KETANJI BROWN JACKSON UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE.
Defendant
Luz Irene Fajardo Campos (“Fajardo Campos” or
“Defendant”), who resided in Mexico until the
time of her arrest in this matter, has been charged with one
count of conspiring to distribute cocaine, methamphetamine,
and marijuana, knowing that those drugs would be imported
into the United States, in violation of 21 U.S.C.
§§ 959(a), 960(b) and 963. This indictment was the
result of a long-term investigation that the Drug Enforcement
Administration (“DEA”) had conducted regarding
Fajardo Campos's alleged drug trafficking activities and
connections to a notorious drug trafficking organization. As
part of that investigation, on April 24, 2013, the government
submitted an application to the United States District Court
for the District of Arizona pursuant to Title III of the
Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, Pub. L.
No. 90-351, 82 Stat. 197, 211-25 (codified as amended at 18
U.S.C. §§ 2510-2522) (“Title III”),
seeking authorization to intercept Fajardo Campos's
electronic communications to and from her BlackBerry cellular
telephones.[1] The federal district court in Arizona
approved the government's application, and that court
subsequently granted both extensions to the requested wiretap
period and additional wiretap authorizations, such that the
surveillance of Fajardo Campos's electronic
communications extended over nearly 29 months.
Before
this Court at present is Fajardo Campos's motion to
suppress the electronic communications that the government
intercepted as a result of the Arizona federal court's
orders. (See Def.'s Mot. to Suppress Intercepted
Elec. Commc'ns (“Def.'s Mot.”), ECF No.
33.) Fajardo Campos argues that the interceptions of her
communications should be suppressed for three independent
reasons. First, she maintains that the government's
applications did not establish that intercepting her
electronic communications was “necessary” within
the meaning of Title III. (See Id. at
14-20.)[2] Second, she argues that the interceptions
took place at BlackBerry's servers in Texas, and
therefore the Arizona federal court lacked territorial
jurisdiction to issue the surveillance orders. (See
Id. at 20-24.) Third, and finally, Fajardo Campos
insists that the interceptions of her communications violated
her Fourth Amendment rights because the government's
applications did not sufficiently specify the communications
that the government was seeking to intercept. (See
Def.'s Reply in Supp. of Mot. to Suppress
(“Def.'s Reply”), ECF No. 38, at 13-14.)
For the
reasons explained below, this Court has concluded that
Fajardo Campos's motion to suppress must be
DENIED. In short, this Court has determined
that the government has shown that traditional law
enforcements methods were insufficient to elucidate the
entire scope of the alleged drug trafficking conspiracy-which
satisfies Title III's necessity requirement-and that the
federal court in Arizona had Title III “listening
post” jurisdiction to authorize surveillance of Fajardo
Campos's Blackberry messages. This Court also finds that
the government's surveillance applications were
sufficiently specific to satisfy the strictures of the Fourth
Amendment. A separate Order consistent with this Memorandum
Opinion will follow.
I.
BACKGROUND
A.
The Underlying Facts[3]
In
January of 2012, the DEA coordinated with the Federal Bureau
of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service to launch
an investigation into a drug trafficking organization
(“DTO”) that was operating in Mexico and in
Tucson, Arizona, among other places. (See Aff. in
Supp. of Application to Intercept Elec. Commc'ns
(“Apr. 2013 Aff.”), ECF No. 37-2 ¶ 12.)
According to investigators, “a leader of the Sinaloa
Cartel[] ha[d] placed [Fajardo Campos] in charge of [this]
DTO [which] operate[d] from Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico, to
southern Arizona and other places in the United
States.” (Id. ¶ 13.) DEA agents utilized
a variety of techniques to investigate the illegal
organization-e.g., they worked with confidential
sources (see id. ¶ 14), conducted pen register
surveillance of Fajardo Campos's phone line (see
id. ¶¶ 24-29), physically surveilled her
associates when those associates visited the United States
(see Id. ¶ 37), obtained a search warrant for
an e-mail account she used (see id. ¶ 42), and
secured authorization to place a geo-tracking device on an
airplane that they believed she used to traffic narcotics
(see Id. ¶ 43). The Mexican government was
contemporaneously investigating Fajardo Campos's alleged
drug trafficking activities, and shared some of its
information with the DEA (see Id. ¶ 38),
including certain transcripts of telephone calls recorded
pursuant to a wiretap that a Mexican court had authorized and
information regarding Mexico's surveillance of her
(see Id. ¶ 50). Nevertheless, according to the
government, these methods were ineffective to reveal the
entirety of the DTO's membership and its operating
methods and current activities, primarily because Fajardo
Campos's inner circle was believed to be composed of
family members, close friends, and long-standing associates
(see Id. ¶ 32), and because her associates, who
primarily operated in Mexico, were part of a violent cartel
that had influence on Mexican government officials (see,
e.g., id. ¶¶ 33, 36, 42). For these
same reasons, the government also believed that other
techniques that it had in its own investigative toolkit-such
as search warrants, trash pulls, or undercover officers-
likewise would be ineffective or prohibitively dangerous.
(See Id. ¶¶ 33, 39-40, 46- 48.)
Consequently,
on April 24, 2013, government investigators requested
authorization from the federal district court for the
District of Arizona to intercept electronic communications
(i.e., text messages, emails, BlackBerry Messenger messages,
and the like) that were made from a particular BlackBerry
device that Fajardo Campos was using (referred to in the
application as “Target Device #1”). (See
Application for Interception of Elec. Commc'ns
(“Apr. 2013 Appl.”), ECF No. 37-2 at 17-25.) In
this application and the attached affidavit, the government
detailed its investigative efforts to date and explained why
it believed it needed to supplement these efforts with
electronic surveillance. (See generally id.; Apr.
2013 Aff.) In addition, it provided technical details about
how the interceptions would occur; specifically, the
government explained that Fajardo Campos's communications
would be “captured through RIM/Blackberry
Corporation's server located in Texas[, ]” and then
automatically sent to a DEA server in Virginia. (Apr. 2013
Aff. ¶ 10(a).) From there, the communications would be
“automatically forward[ed] . . . to specialized
equipment located at the DEA Tucson, Arizona Division, where
the messages are first received and reviewed by law
enforcement agents and/or foreign language interpreters under
law enforcement supervision.” (Id.; see
also Id. ¶ 10(d) (explaining that “[a]ll
monitoring of the interceptions over the TARGET DEVICES will
be performed in Tucson, Arizona”).) The government
further represented that agents reviewing the intercepted
communications would employ “minimization”
procedures, and that communications that were not relevant to
the investigation would not be shared with the investigative
team. (See Id. ¶¶ 52-53.)
On
April 24, 2013, based on representations that the
communications would “first be heard and
minimized” in the District of Arizona (Order
Authorizing Interception of Elec. Commc'ns, ECF No. 37-2,
at 5), and upon finding that “normal investigative
procedures have been tried and have failed, reasonably appear
to be unlikely to succeed if tried, or are too dangerous to
employ, ” (id. at 4), the Arizona federal
district court issued an order granting the Title III wiretap
application and authorizing the interceptions of Target
Device #1 for a period of no more than 30 days (see
Id. at 5). This same court granted two extensions of the
surveillance thereafter (see Def.'s Mot. at
6-7), and then, on July 29, 2013, that court also approved
the government's request to monitor a different
BlackBerry device-Target Device #7- that government
investigators believed Fajardo Campos was using in lieu of
the Target Device #1 (see Id. at 7).
The
government requested and received eight extensions of the
court's authorization to intercept communications over
Target Device #7 before seeking approval to intercept
communications over Target Device #17, which the government
believed Fajardo Campos began using in lieu of Target Device
#7. (See Id. at 7-9.) The court granted and extended
this approval six times (see Id. at 9), and the
government then requested and received authorization to
resume interceptions of Target Device #7; the court
subsequently extended that authorization ten times
as well (see Id. at 11-13). Then, on August 3, 2015,
the Arizona federal court authorized the government to
intercept communications over a fourth BlackBerry device that
it believed Fajardo Campos was using-Target device #60.
Finally, on September 2, 2015, the government ceased all
interceptions of Fajardo Campos's devices. (See
Gov't's Resp. to Def.'s Mot. (“Gov't
Opp'n”), ECF No. 36, at 3.)
In each
of the Title III wiretap applications that were submitted to
the federal court in Arizona, the government detailed the
progress of its investigation and averred that continuing
interceptions were necessary in order to determine the full
scope of the DTO. (See, e.g., Aff. in Supp. of
Application to Intercept Elec. Commc'ns (“Aug. 2015
Aff.”), ECF No. 37-3, at 54-241, ¶¶ 70-202
(detailing results of alternative investigative techniques).)
B.
The Current Proceedings
On
August 30, 2016, a federal grand jury in the District of
Columbia returned an indictment charging Fajardo Campos with
one count of conspiring to manufacture and distribute five
kilograms or more of cocaine, 500 grams or more of
methamphetamine, and 1, 000 kilograms of marijuana for
importation into the United States in violation of 21 U.S.C.
§§ 959(a), 960(b) and 963. (See
Indictment, ECF No. 1.) Fajardo Campos filed the instant
motion to suppress the wiretap evidence on August 30, 2018.
(See Def.'s Mot.)[4]
As
noted above, in her suppression motion Fajardo Campos asserts
that the government's applications did not establish that
intercepting her electronic communications was
“necessary” within the meaning of Title III,
because other less intrusive means of gathering evidence were
available to law enforcement officers (who were in fact using
such alternative methods with success). (See Id. at
14-20.) In addition, she argues that the Arizona federal
court lacked territorial jurisdiction to issue the Title III
surveillance orders because the interception occurred at
Blackberry's servers in Texas, when her messages were
first copied and then forwarded to ...