The court said New Jersey's state constitutional privacy right is more expansive than the Fourth Amendment, and will extend to identifying information known only to Internet service providers. In order to access this identifying information, law enforcement must obtain a grand jury subpoena, the court said.

The court analogized Internet subscriber information to both telephone billing records and bank account information in reaching its conclusion. The Internet, like phone calls and banking, is an "essential activity" that demands a reasonable expectation of privacy for participants, the court said.

The IP address had been logged as visiting a corporate distribution website at the time the corproate website received an account modification request. The distributor grew suspicious when the user logged into a major account, changed the shipping address to a nonexistent combination of numbers and streets, and reformulated the password. The distributor called the account holder to verify the changes, and disclosed the IP address.

The account holder took the IP address to the police, claiming that the changes to the account had been made by an unauthorized outside party.

Local law enforcement determined that Comcast owned the ISP, served a municipal subpoena seeking the user's identifying information. Comcast identified the user as the defendant, Shirley Reid, a disgruntled employee of the account holder.

Reid was arrested and charged with second-degree computer theft. She moved to suppress the evidence, arguing that its collection was an illegal search and seizure.

The New Jersey Supreme Court agreed, upholding the finding of the lower court.

Although the court suppressed the evidence, it was clear that, with a proper subpoena, it could be reproduced, and the case could again proceed against Reid.

Unlike an improperly coerced confession, Comcast's records existed independently on the faulty process the police followed, the court said. "As a result, the records can be reliably reproduced and lawfully reacquired through a proper grand jury subpoena."