What is the significance of United States v. Pervaz (1997)?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

In United States v. Pervaz,26 the court evaluated the admissibility of information gathered by a cellular telephone company after being alerted by authorities that it was being victimized. The court ruled that the application of the Fourth Amendment in third-party origination cases hinges on a variety of factors, including, "the extent of the government's role in instigating or participating in the search, its intent and the degree of control it exercises over the search and the private party, and the extent to which the private party aims primarily to help the government or to serve its own interests" (at 6). In this case, the court ruled that the company's actions were primarily motivated by its wish to identify those individuals guilty of defrauding their consumers, as opposed to helping the government. In addition, the fact that the government was not informed of the company's intention to undertake action to ascertain the culprit's identities was indicative of the lack of control exercised by the government in this situation. Clearly, this case involved individuals or entities acting independently of government instruction.