Odd Stored Communications Act ruling in a case about obtaining a university employee's e-mail from the university w/ an invalid subpoena. Held: No SCA violation b/c the university consented to the disclosure, & there must be a consent exception. (Thread.) orinkerrblog.files.wordpress.com/2018/12/Walker… 
That rationale is wrong. 2703 does not have an exception for the e-mail provider's consent. It wouldn't make sense for it to have that exception, as 2703 is about the provider being forced to do something. Voluntary disclosure is dealt with in 2702, not 2703.
If the court concluded that the university was consenting to the disclosure -- or at least that it had to view it that way because the CA3's 4A ruling effectively required that approach -- the issue was whether the voluntary disclosure was ok under 2702, not 2703.
The court would have been on solid ground then in saying there was no violation: Providers that don't provide services "to the public" aren't prohibited from disclosing voluntarily under 2702. A uni doesn't provide e-mail accounts to the public, so this was okay under 2702.
But implying a consent exception in 2703 is problematic because it would seem to nullify 2702: It would allow a provider to the public, like a Google or Yahoo, to consent to disclosure. The point of 2702 is to block that. /end
Oh, and one more thought: It seems an open question about whether attempting to use unlawful process to get contents -- here, an unlawful subpoena to get e-mails -- counts as a violation of 2703, quite apart from how the provider responds.
Textually, is attempting to get contents but not, as a result of the process actually getting contents, "requir[ing]"the provider to disclose contents? I can imagine it is, but it's not crystal clear.
I also found the idea that there was provider consent a bit strange on the facts, but I'll accept this may be a problem with the CA3 opinion on the 4A and not the district court op on the SCA here.
