Responding to federal subpoenas for mobile phone records.

What a subpoena can actually reach.

Under the Stored Communications Act, a subpoena reaches basic subscriber information and, with a § 2703(d) order, transactional records - numbers dialed, session times, tower registrations. Content requires a warrant. Knowing the tier matters: if the government has only subpoenaed, it is early; a 2703(d) order means a judge has already found specific and articulable facts; a warrant means probable cause existed on paper.

If the subpoena came to you or your business.

Calendar the return date immediately - blowing it is contempt. Then scope: federal subpoenas are routinely broader than the rules allow, and a call from counsel narrows date ranges, custodians, and categories more often than not. Preserve everything the moment you are served; deletion after service is obstruction, and the government checks.

Review before production is non-negotiable. Privileged threads get logged, not produced. Personal data outside the scope gets objected to, not volunteered. Production happens on a schedule counsel negotiates - rolling, certified, and documented.

If the records are about you.

You may never be told - § 2705(b) gag orders keep carriers quiet. If you learn of a demand, treat it as the investigation announcing itself: counsel engages the prosecutor, identifies the theory, and starts building the counter-timeline from the same records. The government reads tower data the way that helps them; there is almost always another reading.

The response playbook.

Day one: preserve, calendar, engage counsel. Week one: scope negotiated, privilege review underway, status confirmed. Production: reviewed, logged, certified. Nothing extra, nothing late, nothing explained casually to an agent on the phone. That discipline is the whole game.

THE AUTHOR

Todd A. Spodek

Managing partner. Second-generation federal defense lawyer - the Netflix defense, the Fox and CNN analyst chair, and two decades of federal courtrooms.

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