The NSA's actions seem pretty precisely tailored to stay on the "right side" of the Constitutional line, avoiding the specific aspects of "privacy" protected by the Constitution.
Electronic communications were clearly not considered by the authors of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights (understandably) but they were clearly trying trying to impose limits on the power of the state and I think the idea that the government should be allowed to track all of everyone's associations would have been abhorrent but that is the practical effect of the monitoring that has been revealed.
But they did have communications and publications, yet they didn't put anything in the Constitution suggesting you have a right to privacy with regards to those things. And it's not like bank records, insurance records, etc, didn't exist back then. In the founder's day, the police could have asked a barkeep for his records to see when you came and went. Why is it suddenly so "abhorrent" when the government asks AT&T for the same sort of information (i.e. not your information, but information AT&T keeps about you)?
The issue here is that all of these data sources are third parties.
Asked. Asked. And he could have said "come back with a warrant".
You continue to ignore the distinctions between:
* A party voluntarily cooperating with law enforcement.
* A party being coerced to cooperate with law enforcement by court order.
* A party being coerced to cooperate with law enforcement because law enforcement officers say so.
You keep insisting the government has a right to access any information someone reveals to a third party without a warrant, even if that third party did not intend to and does not wish to reveal it.
What precedent exists for this? If there is any at all (and this will be the third time I've asked you for it), does any of it pre-date 2001?
