Opinion
Dеfendant Yvette Renee Franzen was found guilty by a jury of selling methamphetamine. On appeal she contends that the trial court erred by admitting evidence of an incriminating statement she made to a police officer. She also contends that the court should have sustained her hearsay objection to evidence that a Web site identified her as the owner of a cell phone used in the sale transaction. We conclude that the trial court could properly find that defendant’s statement was not the product of interrogation, but that the court erred by admitting the evidence from the Web site under the “published compilation” exception to the hearsay rule. However we do not believe the error in admitting this evidence is likely to have affected the verdict. Accordingly we will affirm the judgment.
Background
Detective Mark Barry of the Santa Clara Police Department testified that in January 2011, he posted several advertisements on craigslist expressing a
Detective Barry subsequently made delivery arrangements with another male, identifying himself as “Joe,” at the same 503 number. Initially the transaction was to occur on March 2 at a coffee bar, but it did not go through that night. The detective suggested, and it was agreed, that the purchase take place tihe next day at an apartment complex in Santa Clara that police had used for such transactions in the past. At around 1:00 that afternoon the dеtective received a call from a male, apparently “Joe,” from a phone with a number in the 650 area code, saying that he would meet the detective at the specified address at 3:30 p.m. Detective Barry testified that he then determined “who that cell phone belonged to” by using “a tool that the police department uses,” i.e., “an internet website called Entersect.” The number “came back to Yvette Franzen.” He received additional messages from that number, which were “[b]asically, just trying to get the directions” to the meeting place. He got a call saying the sellers would arrive and wait for him in a blue Honda Civic with black rims. The caller confirmed that the detective “had the money,” and the detective sought assurances “that the weight was going to be correct; that I wasn’t going to be light,” which was “street language for making sure they weren’t going to short me for the amount of drugs I was going to be buying.”
At some point Detective Barry received a call from “Joe” saying that he was at the arranged location. Detective Barry arrived there around 3:15 p.m. He saw the blue Honda Civic parked in a carport by itself. He called the seller, presumably at the 650 number, and a female answered, saying, “We are here,” and asked his location. After they spoke for perhaps 10 seconds, he said, “Okay, I see you.” He walked to the Honda and approached the passenger side of the car, where defendant was sitting. He said, “Hi” and “basically, ‘Are you Joe?’ ” to which the driver, later identified as Jeffrey Thomas Umbertas, said, “Yes.” Defendant said, “Why don’t you get in the back,” and started to move her seat forward so the detective could enter the two-door vehicle. A department policy forbade him to comply with this suggestion, so he circled to the driver’s side, where he and Umbertas eventually consummated the sale of a substance later confirmed to be methamphetamine.
Defendant was charged with (1) transportation, sale, or distribution of methamphetamine (Health & Saf. Code, § 11379, subd. (a)); (2) possession of controlled substance paraphernalia, to wit, an opium pipe (Health & Saf. Code, § 11364); and (3) using and being under the influence of methamphetamine (Health & Saf. Code, § 11550, subd. (a)). After the close of evidence she entered pleas of no contest to the second and third counts. The jury returned a guilty verdict on count 1. The trial court imposed a sentence of two years in prison, but suspended execution and placed defendant on probation with conditions including one year in county jail. Defendant filed this timely appeal.
Discussion
I. Miranda
A. Background
Officer Bill Buddeman testified that he was assigned to pick up defendant at the site of the arrest and transport her to a temporary holding facility at the police department. When he picked her up she was in handcuffs. Before placing her in his car he conducted a seаrch for weapons or drugs. He saw a phone on the left side of her brassiere, but left it there because it did not pose a threat to his safety. When they arrived at the holding facility, she remained in handcuffs while he seated her in a chair and began to ask her some medical questions as part of the booking process. As she sat there “her phone began to ring.” He told her he would “let her get the phone after I was done questioning her and after the handcuffs were taken off.” She said, “It’s probably the guy looking for his money.” He said, “What guy?” She replied, “The guy that gave my friend the drugs to sell, I guess.”
Defendant contends that the court erred in admitting this testimony because her statements to Officer Buckleman were obtained in violation of the Miranda rule. (See Miranda v. Arizona (1966)
B. Standard of Review
Here as below the pivotal issue is whether Officer Buckleman’s question, “What guy?” constituted “interrogation” for purposes of the Miranda rule. “In reviewing the trial court’s denial of a suppression motion on Miranda-Edwards grounds, ‘it is well established that we accept the trial court’s resolution of disputed facts and inferences, and its evaluations of credibility, if supported by substantial evidence. We independently determine from the undisputed facts and the facts properly found by the trial court whethеr the challenged statement was illegally obtained.’ [Citation.] To the extent mixed questions of fact and law are present,-they are reviewed de novo if predominantly legal and for substantial evidence if predominantly factual. [Citations.]” (People v. Gamache (2010)
C. Analysis
In Miranda, supra,
In Ray, the defendant was serving time in a Michigan prison when he expressed a desire to talk about his past. (Ray, supra, 13 Cal.4th at pp. 327, 333.) He was put in touch with a prison investigator to whom he “volunteеred his involvement in several crimes,” including a fatal shooting outside a Bakersfield bar. (Id. at p. 327.) He explained that the crimes “would otherwise remain unsolved,” and that since a coparticipant had died he “had been reading the Bible and wished to atone for his mistakes,” and he “expressed concern that an innocent person might be accused of the crimes.” (Ibid.) The investigator occasionally interrupted defendant’s account “to interject ‘yeah’ or ‘okay,’ to repeat a statement defendant had just made, or to ask defendant about an ambiguity in his account.” (Id. at p. 334, fn. omitted.) His questions were mostly “limited to the dates and locations of the various crimes and the fate of the victims, namely, whether they were ‘tied up,’ robbed of their cash and/or car, or otherwise ‘hurt.’ ” (Id. at fn. 9.)
On appeal the defendant contended that this information, as well as the products of subsequent questioning by a Bakersfield detective, should have been suppressed under Miranda. The court concluded that the statements to the Michigan investigator were not the products of interrogation because the defendant, acting for “reasons that were entirely personal,” had “initiated contact” with Michigan officials for the purpose of disclosing his criminal conduct. (Ray, supra, 13 Cal.4th at pp. 337-338.) The court rejected his contention that the contact “became coercive at some unspecified point because [the investigator] asked questions.” (Id. at p. 338.) The questioning “did not influence the manner in which defendant reported the crimes. The
In People v. Bradford (1997)
In Gamache, supra,
“Under these rules,” the court continued, “small talk is permitted.” (Gamache, supra,
In Gamache the exchange producing the incriminating statements was apparently triggered by an officer’s “innocuous” question. Here the exchange was initiated entirely by defendant. Officer Buckleman’s only contribution was to ask, “What guy?,” in response to defendant’s spontaneous reference to a “guy looking for his money.” A more “neutral” question is difficult to imagine. It is possible—though the record contains no evidence on the point—that Officer Buckleman might have been able to foresee an incriminating response, i.e., that the only “guy” likely to be “looking for his money” was the provider of the drugs in whose sale defendant was implicated. But the trial court found, on substantial evidence, that the officer’s question was merely a natural conversаtional response to defendant’s own statement—a statement which, in form and content, invited the hearer to request clarification. If an arrestee suddenly says, “I wish I hadn’t done it,” and the officer to whom he is speaking responds, “Done what?,” the prisoner has hardly been “interrogated” as most people would understand that term, even if it would appear on reflection that he was probably referring to the conduct that got him arrested. The officer is not seeking an incriminating answer; indeed, such an answer only becomes foreseeable upon supposing the arrestee to be guilty of the crime. The officer is simply giving a normal response to the arrestee’s conversational opening. This is not “interrogation” as commonly understood or as contemplated by the foregoing authority. Accordingly, the trial court did not err in refusing to exclude evidence of defendant’s reply.
II. Hearsay
A. Background
The defense filed a written motion seeking a hearing under Evidence Code sections 402 and 403 to determine the admissibility of “various cell phone
The court apparently heard the motion in chambers. As later recapitulated on the record, defense counsel’s objections at that time were hearsay, lack of foundation, and “[t]he fact that, basically, oral testimony can’t be used to prove the contents of the writing.” The prosecutor’s position, as recited for the record, was that the Entersect evidence came within the hearsay exception for “published compilation[s]” set forth in Evidence Code section 1340 (section 1340).
The subject came up at trial as follows. First, Detective Barry testified that at 1:00 o’clock on the day of the buy, he received a call from a number in the 650 area code, which was different from the number he had previously dealt with. The prosecutor asked if he was “able to determine who that cell phone belonged to.” Defense counsel objected on grounds of foundation and hearsay. The court responded, “I believe she’s attempting to establish the foundation. I will allow it.” The detective then affirmed that he was able to identify the owner of the number. The prosecutor then asked, “How were you able to do that?,” to which he replied, “There is a tоol that the police department uses. It’s an internet website called Entersect.” He went on to describe it as “the internet-based site that the police department pays a fee for that, basically, keeps track or it has a database of telephone numbers. And if you enter in that number, it will tell whatever information that’s out there within the internet that it might be assigned to.” The prosecutor asked if it was “a compilation, a published compilation of phone numbers,” to which the witness replied, “It is. It will come back with the closest hit, and then several other numbers if there is anything else listed or associated with that number, [f] You can also use the same system for people, address, vehicles, what have you.” He affirmed that it is “something that is done by a business,” for which
B. Standard of Review
It is often said that a trial court’s ruling on the admissibility of evidence is vested in that court’s discretion and will not be disturbed on appeal unless that discretion was abused. (See, e.g., People v. Enriquez (1977)
Thus insofar as the trial court expressly or impliedly determined the historical facts bearing on admissibility, its ruling must be upheld so long as it is supported by substantial evidence. But insofar as the court selected and applied the governing legal principles, including the meanings of statutory terms, its ruling is subject to independent review.
1. The Published Compilation Exception
The prosecution acknowledged that Detective Barry’s testimony was hearsay, but offered it under the “published compilation” exception to the hearsay rule set forth at section 1340.
Here the presence of the last element was undisputed, as was the police department’s status as a “business as defined in section 1270.”
According to the drafters of the Evidence Code, section 1340 merely “codifie[d] an exception” to the hearsay rule “that ha[d] been recognized by statute and by the courts in specific situations.” (Recommendation Proposing an Evidence Code (Jan. 1965) 7 Cal. Law Revision Com. Rep. (1965) p. 264; cf. Tentative Recommendation and a Study Relating to The Uniform Rules of Evidence (Aug. 1962) 4 Cal. Law Revision Com. Rep. (1963) p. 338 [uniform rule on which § 1340 was ultimately based “ha[d] no counterpart in the California statutes,” but there were “some indication in judicial decisions that this exception m[ight] exist in California”].) They cited three authorities illustrating statements within the exception: California Uniform Commercial Code section 2724, which authorizes proof of a commodity’s market price by “reports in official publications or trade journals or in newspapers or periodicals of general circulation published as the reports of such market”; Emery v. Southern Cal. Gas Co. (1946)
In In re Michael G. (1993)
In People ex rel. Lockyer v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. (2004)
It appears from these decisions, as well as the authorities cited by the drafters, that the published compilation exception is not to be broadly or uncritically applied. One treatise describes the parallel federal rule as “actually narrow,” having “gr[own] out of a tradition with distinct limits.” (4 Mueller & Kirkpatrick, Federal Evidence (3d ed. 2007) § 8:101, p. 885, fn. omitted [discussing Fed. Rules Evid., rule 803(17), 28 U.S.C.].) It has been treated, explicitly or implicitly, as subject to overarching concerns about the reliability of statements offered in particular cases, аnd whether they possesses adequate indicia of trustworthiness to warrant presentation to the trier of fact as proof of the matter asserted.
This cautious approach is consistent with the general policies underlying the hearsay rule and its exceptions. The rule reflects a general supposition that out-of-court statements are often not a fair or reliable way to prove disputed facts. (See 1 Witkin, Cal. Evidence, supra, Hearsay, § 1, pp. 783-784.) Every exception rests on the premise that the conditions posited by the exception overcome the general aversion to such statements, largely because those conditions furnish some assurance that statements satisfying them are significantly more reliable than unsworn extrajudicial statements in general. (See In re Michael G., supra,
Hearsay exceptions also commonly involve considerations of necessity, or at least efficiency, i.e., in the absence of the exception there might be no
2. “Published Compilation”
We have concluded that the facts presented below were insufficient to establish that the Entersect Web site, or perhaps more precisely the database queried by Detective Barry through that Web site, was a “published compilation” for purposes of section 1340. The history, language, and rationale of section 1340 suggest that the exception contemplates an organized, edited presentation of a finite quantity of information that, if not printed on paper, has been recorded and circulated in some fixed form analogous to printing. Nothing in the record suggests that this was the case with the information introduced as evidence here.
Before using the phrase “or other published compilation,” the statute lists four specific types of “compilation” that will come within its scope: A “tabulation” is an “arrangement in the form of a table or orderly scheme.” (See Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dict., supra, at p. 1199 [“tabulate” as “to put in tabular form”; “tabular” as “of, relating to, or arranged in a table, specif: set up in rows and columns”].) A “list” is “[a] catalogue or roll consisting of a row or series of names, figures, words, or the like.” (Oxford English Dict., available online at <http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/108991> [as of Nov. 6, 2012].) A “directory” is “[something that serves to direct; a guide; esp. a book of rules or directions.” (Id., <http://www.oed.com/view/ Entry/53319> [as of Nov. 6, 2012].) And a “register” is “[a] book or volume in which important items of information of a particular kind are regularly and accurately recorded; a collection of entries so created; a written record or account.” (Id., <http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/161292> [as of Nov. 6, 2012].)
It thus appears that the paradigmatic compilation is written, such that a “published” compilation is made public by. printing, or an equivalent process. That characteristic may be thought to enhance its reliability in a number of respects: (1) it suggests that the publisher has made a financial investment in the publication, and is exposed to potential loss if it fails to sell; (2) it means that the content is limited in quantity, such that the publisher must exercise some kind of editorial discretion, probably including steps to confirm the accuracy of the matters included; (3) its content is also fixed in time, meaning that inaccuracies will persist (and the publisher’s reputation will remain exposed to harm by their presence) into the indefinite future; and (4) the work is generally circulated as a whole, creating a risk for the publisher that all errors will eventually be exposed.
The database from which Detective Barry extracted the evidence at issue here bears virtually no resemblance to a “published compilation” as thus described. Typically, information in a database is not presented to users in any form, let alone a fixed form analogous to printing. Its contents are not permanently exposed to public scrutiny in their totality but are retrieved byte by byte through a process of querying or searching. Here, for instance, there
To treat a database as a published compilation merely because it is accessible through a Web site would dramatically undermine the delicate balance of competing policies reflected in the hearsay mle, its exceptions, and the particular exception here under scrutiny. It is common knowledge by now that the World Wide Web, and more generally the Internet, provides ready access to information of all shades and degrees of accuracy, from the indisputably true to the inarguably false.
Section 1340 was manifestly not intended to permit the introduction over a hearsay objection of “information that’s out there.” “Information” does not become “evidence” merely because someone finds it worth seeing. The Internet contains, or more accurately is connected to and thus capable of conveying, a large and growing part of all of the recordable information in existence. Some of this information is as reliable as any traditional source of information. But some of it would be almost universally considered not only unreliable but extravagantly untrue. If this technology provides the means to store and convey every truth any human has ever articulated, it also has the capability of “publishing” every misconception, error, delusion, or outright lie anyone has ever set down. The world of print has known its share of infamous frauds, libels, and fantasies packaged as fact, but at least the cost and difficulty of publication has had some tendency to inhibit the circulation of erroneous information. That inhibition has now all but disappeared. And while the absence of barriers to publication may promise a true “marketplace of ideas,” it also means thаt the mere fact of publication cannot be relied upon to furnish any assurance of reliability.
Nor is it only the act of publication that has been made cheap and easy. The creation of “content” may also be accomplished with virtually no effort or expense. Thus while the creation of a database from raw data can be costly, it is also possible to “harvest” or “aggregate” data from other digital sources automatically and virtually for free. Wherever the information may come from, nothing requires a database creator to take arty particular steps to ensure its correctness. He may choose quantity over quality and leave it to users to verify the accuracy of the data they retrieve. When an inaccuracy is brought to the operator’s attention it may be corrected with no one the wiser save the person who discovered it. And while the entire database may be accessible at any given time, it never achieves a final, unified form in which it is “published” to a mass audience.
This is not to suggest that electronically stored data as a whole is less trustworthy than printed data as a whole. But treating a Web site’s database as a “published compilation” merely because a. fee is paid for access would stray far from the conception underlying section 1340. Of course electronically stored data may take forms highly analogous to printed volumes; indeed
We do acknowledge some evidence of one of the factors contributing to the rationale for section 1340. Detective Barry testified that the depаrtment “pays a fee” to use the Entersect site. This suggests that the site owner has a pecuniary motive to ensure that the information provided is useful to subscribers. As discussed in the following part, however, the nature of the use its subscribers apparently make of the information differs critically from the use and reliance underlying the posited trustworthiness of published compilations.
We conclude that the proponent of the evidence failed to establish that the Entersect site possessed characteristics that would justify treating its contents as a published compilation for purposes of section 1340.
3. Nature of Required Use and Reliance
This case raises a particular additional concern, which is the failure of the evidence below to satisfy the key condition that the compilation be “generally used and relied upon as accurate in the course of a business.” Nothing in this record suggests that the information amassed on the Entersect Web site receives the kind of use and reliance contemplated by the exception. In the paradigmatic situation, a published compilation is a volume or other printed work in which a business looks up some fact that it will use in seeking financial gain or avoiding loss. A business trading in commodities relies on published prices in the sense that it accepts them as true, entering into contracts at those prices—contracts on which it stands to gain or lose money. Actuaries and their clients likewise trust present value tables and mortality • tables to enable them to calculate the true costs and risks on which a business or investment decision may depend. There is of course no guarantee of accuracy in such cases; a value may be miscalculated, misreported, misentered, or misprinted. But the user considers it highly likely that the information is accurate—likely enough that he treats it as true. In effect users bet on the accuracy of such a publication. Publishers, likewise, “stake their business or public reputations on [zte] accuracy.” (Conoco Inc. v. Department of Energy, supra, 99 F.3d 387, 393, italics added.)
Beyond that, however, we believe the use and reliance likely to be made of such information by a police department, or similar investigatory enterprise, is so far removed from the purpose and rationale of section 1340 that it simply cannot justify application of that statute in the circumstances suggested here. In contrast to the paradigmatic user of a published compilation, a police department does not gather information for its own commercial advantage. It gathers information, rather, in the performance of an official duty to investigate suspected criminal activity. Investigators typically deal as much in suspicions and possibilities as in established facts. The business of police detectives, in particular, is “solving” crimes by identifying “suspects” and either ehminating them from suspicion or gathering evidence to build a case against them. Due to the nature of this undertaking, a detective may “use” and “rely on” information for investigative purposes even though he doubts its accuracy.
Respondent, to its credit, acknowledges this problem. It writes that the police department relied “on the website, at least to produce a putative name of a registered user.” (Italics added.) It describes the information thus retrieved as “tentative proof’ that gave “some initial indication to the detective as to the identity of the owner of the cell phone.” (Italics added.)
We conclude that the prosecution presented insufficient foundation for admission of this evidence over defendant’s hearsay objection.
D. Prejudice
Although the evidence from the Entersect site should not have been admitted on the meager foundation offered for it, we are unable to conclude that its admission was prejudicial to defendant. The only fact attributed to the Entersect site was that the second of two phones used to arrange the drug sale was defendant’s. But Detective Barry also testified, without objection below or here, that when defendant was arrested she was in possession of this same phone. The question therefore turns on how likely it is that the jury’s finding of guilt depended on evidence of defendant’s ownership, as distinct from her mere possession, of the phone.
We note that defendant’s possession of the phone was itself some evidence of ownership. Unless one has some reason to think otherwise, one generally supposes that a phone in another’s possession is that person’s phone. Here, however, there might have been some reason to question that supposition, because prior to the last phone conversation all of the detective’s voice contacts over that phone connection had been with a male. This raised at least the possibility that defendant was only in temporary possession of the phone and that her only direct involvement in the transaction was to answer the detective’s last call and say, “We are here,” and “Where are you at?”
However, this involvement alone—regardless of who owned the phone—seems more than sufficient to establish defendant’s guilt as an aider and abettor. As the jury was instructed, defendant was guilty on that theory if she “aid[ed], facilitate[ed], promote[d], encourage[d], or instigate[d] the perpetrator’s commission of th[e] crime.” “[Pjroof of aider and abettor liability requires proof in three distinct areas: (a) the direct perpetrator’s actus reus—a crime committed by the direct perpetrator, (b) the aider and abettor’s mens rea—knowledge of the direct perpetrator’s unlawful intent and an intent to assist in achieving those unlawful ends, and (c) the aider and abettor’s actus reus—conduct by the aider and abettor that in fact assists the achievement of the crime.” (People v. Perez (2005)
Here defendant’s act of conversing with the detective in aid of the planned rendezvous constituted sufficient involvement in the sale to establish the actus reus of aiding and abetting. Ownership of the phone was, for these purposes, immaterial. Defendant would have been no less guilty if the conversation had taken place in a public phone booth which the detective had called by prearrangement. It is true that defendant’s ownership of the phone might have suggested additional involvement on her part by, e.g., lending her phone to Umbertas, or perhaps authoring and receiving text messages, in earlier communications with Detective Barry. But these inferences seem weaker than the uncontested facts that she actually took a phone call from him which helped to bring about the rendezvous, and indeed participated in the rendezvous to the extent of inviting him to enter the car.
Of course for any of her involvement to constitute aiding and abetting, it also had to appear that defendant acted “with knowledge of the criminal purpose of the perpetrator and with an intent or purpose either of committing, or of encouraging or facilitating commission of, the offense.” (People v. Beeman (1984)
The judgment is affirmed.
Premo, J., and Márquez, J., concurred.
Appellant’s petition for review by the Supreme Court was denied February 13, 2013, S207403.
Notes
The prosecutor did not respond on the record to the defense objection under Evidence Code section 1523. That objection, however, is not pursued on appeal.
At this point the trial court had not yet definitively ruled the foundation sufficient to bring the evidence within an exception to the hearsay rule. Defense counsel should therefore have reiterated her objection. There is no contention before us, however, that the objection was not adequately preserved for appeal.
“Evidence of a statement, other than an opinion, contained in a tabulation, list, directory, register, or other published compilation is not made inadmissible by the hearsay rule if the compilation is generаlly used and relied upon as accurate in the course of a business as defined in Section 1270.” (§ 1340.)
“As used in this article, ‘a business’ includes every kind of business, governmental activity, profession, occupation, calling, or operation of institutions, whether carried on for profit or not.” (Evid. Code, § 1270.)
The objections may have rested on the assertion that “there was ... no basis in the record to understand the procedures used to arrive at MRl’s data.” (People ex rel. Lockyer v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., supra,
The facts here do not suggest any “necessity” for the Entersect evidence. Traditionally the ownership of a phone number would be readily established by means of a subpoena directed to the custodian of records for the relevant telephone company, whose relevant business records would be unobjectionable. Nothing before the trial court suggested that procuring suсh evidence would have placed an undue burden on the prosecution.
One 2005 study showed alarming error rates in consumer credit reports. (Pierce & Ackerman, Data Aggregators: A Study of Data Quality and Responsiveness (May 19, 2005) archived at <http://web.archive.org/web/20070319220412/ and http://www.privacyactivism.org/ docs/DataAggregatorsStudy.html> [as of Nov. 6, 2012].) The study showed 9 percent of the telephone numbers reported by one data broker, and 67 percent of those reported by the other, were erroneous. {Ibid.) Of course, our reference to this study may be criticized on numerous grounds, including the likelihood that its figures are obsolete, that the study was small, and that no foundation has been laid with respect to the trustworthiness of the sources or methods on which it is based. But this would be an exceptionally ironic criticism here. This study is just as arguably a “published compilation,” and the foundation for its consideration here is at least as solid, as was presented below in support of the challenged evidence from the Entersect site. Indeed, the article cited here bears more resemblance to the paradigmatic “compilation” because it consists of a fixed, written work rather than an amorphous mass of possibly ephemeral data entries.
We believe it has not been unknown for a malicious application or Web site to “harvest” the contents of a computer user’s personal address book. It takes no imagination at all to see that information so gathered could be a decade or more out of date. This will not prevent it from eventually being propagated so as to join, as the detective put it, “whatever information that’s out there within the internet.”
Since the purpose of the Entersect site is to provide “investigative data” (see fn. 10, post), it is possible that its users would prefer that the data there not be aggressively pruned, since they might favor comprehensiveness over strict accuracy. There is little point in speculating on the subject, however, for the record is silent.
These characterizations are corroborated by Entersect’s own home page, which describes it as “the nation’s leading provider of investigative data for law enforcement and government agencies.” (Entersect <https://www.entersect.net/marketing/media/entersect/index.html> [as of Nov. 6, 2012].)