No Fourth Amendment Privacy in Freenet Opennet Block Requests Logged by “Freenet Roundup”

Introduction

United States v. Johnson (1st Cir. July 7, 2026) addresses whether law enforcement conducts a Fourth Amendment “search” when it uses a modified Freenet client—Freenet Roundup—to receive and log certain file-block requests on Freenet’s Opennet mode and then uses that information to identify a user’s IP address and obtain a residential search warrant.

The parties were the United States (appellee) and Eric Robert Johnson (defendant-appellant), who was convicted (via a conditional guilty plea) of possessing child pornography under 18 U.S.C. § 2252(a)(5)(B), (b)(2). Johnson’s appeal preserved a single core dispute: whether evidence should have been suppressed because the government’s Freenet Roundup activity violated the Fourth Amendment.

The key legal issue was whether Johnson had a reasonable expectation of privacy—particularly an objective one—in the information transmitted with his Freenet Opennet requests such that the government’s receipt/logging of those requests constituted a “search” requiring a warrant.

Summary of the Opinion

The First Circuit affirmed the denial of Johnson’s suppression motion. Assuming (without deciding) that Johnson had a subjective expectation of privacy, the court held he lacked an objective expectation of privacy in his Freenet Opennet activity.

The court reasoned that Johnson voluntarily connected to strangers in Freenet’s Opennet (low security) mode after explicit warnings that others could discover his identity and trace his activity to him. Freenet Roundup largely operated like an ordinary Freenet node, and the additional logging/filtering and later comparison/analysis steps used only information Johnson voluntarily transmitted with his requests. The court rejected analogies to Carpenter v. United States and Kyllo v. United States, concluding the government did not conduct the sort of pervasive, unavoidable tracking (Carpenter) or non-public technological intrusion into the home (Kyllo) that triggers heightened Fourth Amendment protection.

Bottom line: using Freenet Opennet to request blocks from strangers is treated like exposing information to the public (including law enforcement), and the government may use what it lawfully receives and can lawfully correlate to identify the user.

Analysis

Precedents Cited

  • Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967)

    Katz supplies the governing “reasonable expectation of privacy” framework. The court applied the familiar two-part inquiry (subjective expectation plus objective reasonableness) and treated the objective prong as dispositive.

  • Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735 (1979)

    Smith is cited for the articulation of the two-part Katz test and for the requirement that courts identify “the nature of the state activity challenged.” The panel used this to narrow Johnson’s framing—from broad “online movements” to the limited act of transmitting Freenet requests to peer nodes and the government’s receipt/logging of those requests.

  • Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S. 296 (2018)

    Carpenter is Johnson’s principal analogy, but the court distinguishes it. Carpenter held that obtaining historical cell-site location information (CSLI) is a Fourth Amendment search because CSLI provides a comprehensive chronicle of a person’s physical movements and is generated “by dint of [the phone’s] operation,” leaving “no way to avoid” the trail short of disconnecting.

    Here, the court found Freenet (especially Opennet file-sharing) is not ubiquitous like a cell phone, does not create “near perfect surveillance,” and does not inevitably generate an intimate longitudinal record of location/movement. Freenet Roundup captured only what was transmitted with Johnson’s discrete, voluntary requests.

  • Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001)

    Johnson argued Freenet Roundup is “sophisticated technology not in general public use.” The court rejected the analogy: Freenet Roundup did not expose the private details of a home that otherwise could be learned only by physical intrusion; instead it logged and filtered information that Freenet users transmit in the ordinary course when requesting blocks from peers. The tool “facilitate[d] membership” in Opennet and recorded what it received.

  • United States v. Morel, 922 F.3d 1 (1st Cir. 2019)

    Morel anchors the First Circuit’s general rule: users have no objectively reasonable expectation of privacy in files shared over publicly available peer-to-peer networks. The Johnson panel treated Freenet Opennet as materially similar in the relevant constitutional sense—voluntary exposure to strangers—particularly given repeated warnings and Johnson’s failure to take “affirmative steps” to protect privacy (e.g., switching modes).

  • United States v. Shipton, 5 F.4th 933 (8th Cir. 2021); United States v. Weast, 811 F.3d 743 (5th Cir. 2016); United States v. Conner, 521 F. App’x 493 (6th Cir. 2013); United States v. Ganoe, 538 F.3d 1117 (9th Cir. 2008); United States v. Perrine, 518 F.3d 1196 (10th Cir. 2008); United States v. Ewing, 140 F.4th 1339 (11th Cir. 2025)

    These decisions collectively establish (across circuits) that peer-to-peer sharing/activity generally defeats an objective expectation of privacy when a user makes files/requests available to others (including anonymously) on a network. The Johnson court used this consensus to reinforce its conclusion that Freenet Opennet is not constitutionally distinct merely because it is designed to improve anonymity.

    Ewing was especially useful to the court’s “frustration” concept: once a user broadcasts information to the network, any expectation of privacy is already defeated, and the government’s later lawful use of what it received (or could receive) is not a new Fourth Amendment intrusion.

  • United States v. Pobre, No. 8:19-CR-348-PX, 2022 WL 1136891 (D. Md. Apr. 15, 2022)

    Although not binding, Pobre is the most factually aligned authority: it upheld Freenet Roundup’s use against a Fourth Amendment challenge because Opennet users lack a reasonable expectation of privacy in that activity. The Johnson court repeatedly relied on Pobre’s framing (e.g., government “act[ing] like an undercover officer crashing a public meeting”) and its Carpenter distinction (“not a ubiquitous part of everyday life”).

  • United States v. Jacobsen, 466 U.S. 109 (1984)

    Jacobsen supports the principle that once an expectation of privacy is frustrated, the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit governmental use of the “now-nonprivate” information. The court used this to justify the government’s later steps (hash comparison, formulaic analysis, subpoena to ISP) as exploitation of lawfully obtained information rather than a separate search.

  • Lewis v. United States, 385 U.S. 206 (1966)

    Lewis undergirds the undercover-officer analogy: when a person voluntarily engages in illegal dealings with others, the risk that the other party is government is borne by the speaker/actor. The court analogized Johnson’s voluntary Opennet participation to inviting an undercover agent into an illicit transaction.

  • Boroian v. Mueller, 616 F.3d 60 (1st Cir. 2010)

    Boroian supports the idea that matching a lawfully obtained record against other lawfully possessed records does not itself infringe a legitimate expectation of privacy. The panel used this to reinforce that the government’s correlation/analysis steps did not transform lawful receipt of request metadata into a search.

  • Riley v. California, 573 U.S. 373 (2014)

    Riley is referenced through Carpenter for the modern observation that cell phones are close to a “feature of human anatomy.” The court cited this to explain why Carpenter’s holding is tethered to unique, near-unavoidable technologies unlike Freenet.

  • Camara v. Mun. Ct. of City & Cnty. of S.F., 387 U.S. 523 (1967); United States v. Karo, 468 U.S. 705 (1984)

    These cases reinforce foundational Fourth Amendment principles: protection against arbitrary governmental invasion and the presumption that home searches require warrants. The Johnson court acknowledged those principles but held the “search” question failed earlier because Johnson lacked an objective expectation of privacy in the information used to obtain the warrant.

  • Harper v. Werfel, 118 F.4th 100 (1st Cir. 2024)

    Harper is used for the Katz framework and as a contemporary comparator: it assessed whether certain digital services are “indispensable” to daily life. Johnson uses Harper to emphasize the panel’s method—asking whether the technology at issue is deeply integrated into everyday life—then concluding Freenet is not.

  • United States v. Stokes, 829 F.3d 47 (1st Cir. 2016)

    Stokes supplies the multi-factor approach the First Circuit uses when evaluating objective reasonableness (control, access regulation, surrounding circumstances, etc.), which the court then applied to Opennet’s voluntary exposure to strangers and Freenet’s warnings.

  • United States v. Tiru-Plaza, 766 F.3d 111 (1st Cir. 2014); United States v. Camacho, 661 F.3d 718 (1st Cir. 2011); United States v. Centeno-González, 989 F.3d 36 (1st Cir. 2021); United States v. McGregor, 650 F.3d 813 (1st Cir. 2011)

    These cases provide standards of review (clear error for factual findings; de novo for legal conclusions, including the ultimate suppression ruling) and how appellate courts view the record in suppression appeals.

  • United States v. Rheault, 561 F.3d 55 (1st Cir. 2009); United States v. Vilches-Navarrete, 523 F.3d 1 (1st Cir. 2008); United States v. Mancini, 8 F.3d 104 (1st Cir. 1993)

    These cases are cited for the “standing” framing: a defendant must show a reasonable expectation of privacy in the thing searched to challenge governmental conduct under the Fourth Amendment.

  • United States v. Guzman, 149 F.4th 1132 (10th Cir. 2025); United States v. Wells, 739 F.3d 511 (10th Cir. 2014)

    Cited for the proposition that subjective expectation of privacy is factual (clear-error review) while objective expectation is legal (de novo review). The panel relied on this division to assume the subjective prong and decide the case on the objective prong.

  • United States v. Mayendía-Blanco, 905 F.3d 26 (1st Cir. 2018); Stor/Gard, Inc. v. Strathmore Ins., 717 F.3d 242 (1st Cir. 2013)

    These are invoked for judicial minimalism: courts should decide cases on the simplest dispositive ground. Having found no objective expectation of privacy, the panel did not address other suppression theories.

Legal Reasoning

  1. Framing the “state activity challenged” narrowly

    The court rejected Johnson’s characterization of the case as broad “internet surveillance.” It focused on: (a) law enforcement’s participation as an Opennet node using a modified client that logs/filter requests, and (b) the government’s later correlation/identification steps based on the information accompanying Johnson’s voluntarily transmitted requests.

  2. Assuming subjective privacy; deciding objective privacy

    The panel assumed, without deciding, that Johnson subjectively sought privacy. It then held society would not recognize an objective expectation of privacy in these circumstances because Johnson knowingly exposed his requests (and the associated routing/identifying information) to strangers by using Opennet mode.

  3. Peer-to-peer doctrine applied to Freenet Opennet

    Building on United States v. Morel and multi-circuit authority, the court treated Freenet Opennet as a publicly accessible peer-to-peer environment. When users voluntarily transmit requests to unknown peers, the Fourth Amendment does not protect those transmissions from being received (and used) by law enforcement.

  4. Warnings and user choice mattered

    Freenet explicitly warned Opennet (low security) users that identity and activity could be traced and that others might discover identity easily. The court used these warnings to underscore that Johnson assumed the risk of exposure by choosing Opennet and by not taking additional “affirmative steps” to protect privacy (e.g., switching away from Opennet).

  5. Technology arguments (Carpenter/Kyllo) failed on function and scope

    The court treated Freenet Roundup as a tool that largely behaves like an ordinary Opennet peer—receiving requests peers voluntarily send—while adding logging and filtering. It did not create a “near perfect” chronicle of a person’s life (Carpenter), nor did it reveal private home details through uncommon sensing technology (Kyllo). The government did not access Johnson’s devices; it used the information transmitted with his requests.

  6. Lawful receipt plus lawful correlation is not a new “search”

    Relying on United States v. Jacobsen and Boroian v. Mueller, the court reasoned that once Johnson exposed information to the network, the government could lawfully use it and match it against lawfully held datasets (e.g., ICAC hash databases) and apply analytical methods to determine whether the sender was likely the originator, and then subpoena an ISP to identify the subscriber.

  7. Undercover analogy reinforces assumption of risk

    Drawing on Lewis v. United States, the court analogized the government’s participation to an undercover presence in a public/voluntary exchange: Johnson chose to transact with strangers; the Fourth Amendment does not protect him from the risk that one of those strangers is law enforcement.

Impact

This decision establishes (or at least clearly announces) a First Circuit rule for Freenet Opennet investigations: an Opennet Freenet user has no objectively reasonable expectation of privacy in the information transmitted with file-block requests to peers, and law enforcement’s use of Freenet Roundup to receive/log those requests is not a Fourth Amendment search.

Likely downstream effects include:

  • Validation of specialized P2P investigative tools so long as they operate by receiving what network users voluntarily transmit, with analysis limited to that information (and lawful follow-on steps like ISP subpoenas and warrants).
  • Constraining Carpenter-based challenges in P2P contexts: defendants will face difficulty analogizing discrete, voluntary network transmissions to CSLI’s pervasive, unavoidable, longitudinal location tracking.
  • Emphasis on user configuration and warnings: explicit software warnings and user-selected low-security modes will be powerful facts against objective privacy claims.
  • Open question preserved: the court expressly left for another day whether using Freenet in Darknet mode could change the objective expectation of privacy analysis.

Complex Concepts Simplified

Peer-to-peer (P2P) network
A system where users’ computers connect directly to other users’ computers to request and provide data, rather than downloading from a central server.
Freenet blocks, manifests, and manifest keys
Freenet breaks files into encrypted “blocks” distributed across many computers. A “manifest” is an index of the blocks, and a “manifest key” is the identifier used to retrieve/reconstruct the file.
Hash value
A unique digital fingerprint of a data block. Investigators can compare hash values against known CSAM hashes without needing to view the file content at the investigative intake stage.
Hops / “Hops to Live”
Requests are forwarded through multiple nodes (“hops”) to obscure origin. “Hops to Live” indicates how many hops remain before the request expires; high remaining hops suggests proximity to the original requestor.
Katz test (subjective vs. objective privacy)
A person must (1) actually try to keep something private (subjective) and (2) have a privacy expectation society recognizes as reasonable (objective). Failing either means no Fourth Amendment “search.”
Third-party exposure / assumption of risk (as applied here)
When you voluntarily transmit information to strangers (or broadly to a network), you generally assume the risk that recipients—including law enforcement—can receive and use that information.
Suppression
A remedy excluding evidence obtained through unconstitutional searches or seizures. If there was no Fourth Amendment search (because no reasonable expectation of privacy), suppression fails at the threshold.

Conclusion

United States v. Johnson reinforces and extends the First Circuit’s peer-to-peer Fourth Amendment doctrine to Freenet Opennet: a user who knowingly operates in a low-security mode connecting to strangers—after warnings that identity and activity may be traceable—cannot claim an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy in the information transmitted with requests. Freenet Roundup’s logging and the government’s subsequent lawful analysis and correlation do not transform that voluntary exposure into a warrantless “search” under Katz v. United States, and the case is materially unlike the pervasive location tracking in Carpenter v. United States or the uncommon home-intrusion technology in Kyllo v. United States.

The decision’s practical significance lies in its clear constitutional permission structure for Opennet-based P2P investigations: law enforcement may participate as a peer, record what it receives, and pursue warrants based on that information—while the harder question of Darknet mode remains unresolved.