3 ms·

Putting aside Prism, I don't see how the cell phone metadata is compatible with the fourth amendment at all. The 4A exists specifically to ban general warrants

Putting aside Prism, I don't see how the cell phone metadata is compatible with the fourth amendment at all. The 4A exists specifically to ban general warrants that allow the government to seize whatever they want without any specificity. That's exactly what the FISC order authorizing metadata collection is. There really isn't any strict vs. liberal interpretation here that I can see.

dclowd9901 13y ago
The interpretation is in the word "seizing." Nothing is taken. It's copied and collected. So does "seizing" mean to collect benignly, or to take possession from another?
mpyne 13y ago
Except this very issue about metadata was already deliberated in the courts decades ago when it first came up that phone companies maintained these metadata records, with the conclusion that they are phone company records, not your records, and that therefore the government could subpoena them if they wished, as long as they didn't individually identify people (which would require something more substantive).
- LoganCale 13y ago
  Phone numbers individually identify people.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    Strictly speaking, phone numbers identify phones. I mean, that's what we would say when the RIAA comes at us saying that IP address umpty-squat was used to download a movie, right? "Must have been my neighbor on my Wifi". "My friend was browsing my laptop". But either way, that's why the NSA must get a separate subpoena to get the subscriber information for a given phone number, if they don't already have it from earlier. And only after that can they get a warrant to allow for grabbing the data itself.
    - LoganCale 13y ago
      It's generally fairly easy for an ordinary person to find someone's identity with just their number, completely bypassing any sort of warrant/subpoena system. If I can do it, I'm sure the NSA does as well.
    - MichaelSalib 13y ago
      First of all, I don't find the IP address argument persuasive and I don't think most courts have either. Secondly, given that it is quite common for DHCP to give a single computer different addresses and nothing like that happens to phone numbers (which are intended to be persistent and not transient identifiers), I don't think your analogy works.

dclowd9901 13y ago

The interpretation is in the word "seizing." Nothing is taken. It's copied and collected. So does "seizing" mean to collect benignly, or to take possession from another?

mpyne 13y ago

Except this very issue about metadata was already deliberated in the courts decades ago when it first came up that phone companies maintained these metadata records, with the conclusion that they are phone company records, not your records, and that therefore the government could subpoena them if they wished, as long as they didn't individually identify people (which would require something more substantive).

LoganCale 13y ago
Phone numbers individually identify people.
- mpyne 13y ago
  Strictly speaking, phone numbers identify phones. I mean, that's what we would say when the RIAA comes at us saying that IP address umpty-squat was used to download a movie, right? "Must have been my neighbor on my Wifi". "My friend was browsing my laptop". But either way, that's why the NSA must get a separate subpoena to get the subscriber information for a given phone number, if they don't already have it from earlier. And only after that can they get a warrant to allow for grabbing the data itself.
  - LoganCale 13y ago
    It's generally fairly easy for an ordinary person to find someone's identity with just their number, completely bypassing any sort of warrant/subpoena system. If I can do it, I'm sure the NSA does as well.
  - MichaelSalib 13y ago
    First of all, I don't find the IP address argument persuasive and I don't think most courts have either. Secondly, given that it is quite common for DHCP to give a single computer different addresses and nothing like that happens to phone numbers (which are intended to be persistent and not transient identifiers), I don't think your analogy works.