NSA Metadata Program “Consistent” With Fourth Amendment, Kavanaugh Once Argued
9th September 2018
Which it is.
Telephone ‘metadata’ is the phone number of the phone you used, the phone number of the phone you called, when you called, and how long the call took. This is information recorded by the phone company for billing purposes. It is not YOUR information, it is the PHONE COMPANY’s information, and therefore doesn’t fall under the Fourth Amendment WITH RESPECT TO YOU. It’s no more ‘your’ information than the entries on the receipt you get at McDonald’s when you buy a Happy Meal.
A lot of people without legal training, or even the brain to follow an argument, get that one wrong, including the author of this article.
Yes, that information can be used to track you. So can having somebody following you on the street, or somebody watching the elevator in your building, or dusting a room for fingerprints in which you have been. Technology allows law enforcement to collect a lot of data more cheaply than they could 100 years ago; that’s not a violation of the Constitution.