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But it isn't a violation of the 4th amendment according the Supreme Court. Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735 (1979). The number you dial isn't private because yo

But it isn't a violation of the 4th amendment according the Supreme Court. Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735 (1979). The number you dial isn't private because you are showing it to the phone company.

skywhopper 12y ago
This is what the court said back then, but the court and the public were naive, and the future implications of such a rule were not yet clear. But even without hindsight, I think the court's logic was flawed. The phone company does not publish a list of who called whom for all the world to read. We would be justifiably outraged if they did. That's the test we should use in determining if information shared with a company is "private". Just like I expect the phone company to keep my payment information private, I also ought to be able to expect my call history is private.
0x5f3759df-i 12y ago
U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon has already rejected that Maryland applies to the NSA bulk collection. Ultimately it will come down the supreme court but I would not be surprised to see them limit the scope of Maryland. >The government’s legal justification for the call-tracking program is based on a 1979 case, Smith v. Maryland, involving the surveillance of a criminal suspect over a two-day period. In that case, the Supreme Court said that Americans have no expectation of privacy in the telephone metadata that companies hold as business records, and that therefore a warrant is not required to obtain such information. A succession of judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court have adopted the government’s argument based on that ruling. >But Leon said the question the Supreme Court confronted in 1979 is not the same as the one he was faced with. “Indeed, the question in this case can more properly be styled as follows: When do present-day circumstances — the evolutions in the government’s surveillance capabilities, citizens’ phone habits, and the relationship between the NSA and telecom companies — become so thoroughly unlike those considered by the Supreme Court thirty-four years ago, that a precedent like Smith does not apply?” he wrote. “The answer, unfortunately for the government, is now.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/judge-nsas-collecting-of-phone-records-is-likely-unconstitutional/2013/12/16/6e098eda-6688-11e3-a0b9-249bbb34602c_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/judge-nsas-collecting...

But it isn't a violation of the 4th amendment according the Supreme Court. Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735 (1979). The number you dial isn't private because you are showing it to the phone company.

skywhopper 12y ago

This is what the court said back then, but the court and the public were naive, and the future implications of such a rule were not yet clear. But even without hindsight, I think the court's logic was flawed. The phone company does not publish a list of who called whom for all the world to read. We would be justifiably outraged if they did. That's the test we should use in determining if information shared with a company is "private". Just like I expect the phone company to keep my payment information private, I also ought to be able to expect my call history is private.

0x5f3759df-i 12y ago

U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon has already rejected that Maryland applies to the NSA bulk collection. Ultimately it will come down the supreme court but I would not be surprised to see them limit the scope of Maryland. >The government’s legal justification for the call-tracking program is based on a 1979 case, Smith v. Maryland, involving the surveillance of a criminal suspect over a two-day period. In that case, the Supreme Court said that Americans have no expectation of privacy in the telephone metadata that companies hold as business records, and that therefore a warrant is not required to obtain such information. A succession of judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court have adopted the government’s argument based on that ruling. >But Leon said the question the Supreme Court confronted in 1979 is not the same as the one he was faced with. “Indeed, the question in this case can more properly be styled as follows: When do present-day circumstances — the evolutions in the government’s surveillance capabilities, citizens’ phone habits, and the relationship between the NSA and telecom companies — become so thoroughly unlike those considered by the Supreme Court thirty-four years ago, that a precedent like Smith does not apply?” he wrote. “The answer, unfortunately for the government, is now.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/judge-nsas-collecting-of-phone-records-is-likely-unconstitutional/2013/12/16/6e098eda-6688-11e3-a0b9-249bbb34602c_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/judge-nsas-collecting...