To catch you up on the Snowden leaks the government was collecting a lot more than metadata. It's also true that Smith v. Maryland is highly controversial. The

To catch you up on the Snowden leaks the government was collecting a lot more than metadata. It's also true that Smith v. Maryland is highly controversial. The Third Party Doctrine essentially states that you can't expect technology to provide you technology so long as the technology is bought or served by someone else. Via CALEA and the Stored Information Act, as well as 702 in FISA and a constellation of other legislation (now Freedom Act as well) third parties are forced to keep records on behalf of national security hawks. In praxis this means that there is no manner by which I can communicate with someone in private anywhere except for in my or their house - and then if I willingly allow a third party product that has a listening device in my house provided by a third party it is the law that I can not expect those conversations to be private either. Smith v. Maryland was in 1979. The world is a radically different place now that software has eaten the world. It is not a good precedent and akin to citing section 215 the way that NSA did.