For decades, the government has used the Third Party Doctrine to obtain massive amounts of phone records without a warrant.
Even prior to the creation of the Third Party Doctrine by the Supreme Court in 1979, government agencies were obtaining phone records using pen register requests that provided them with info on numbers called and the length of the calls. This method, however, required the government to supply some information of its own: specifically, a targeted source phone number phone companies could use to search for call metadata.
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Tag: Expectation of privacy (United States)
More Mass Surveillance: FOIA Docs Reveal Illegal Snooping On US Residents’ Financial Transactions
If it can conceivably be considered a “third party record,” the government is going to seek warrantless access to it. The Third Party Doctrine — ushered into existence by the Supreme Court in 1979 — says there’s no expectation of privacy in information shared with third parties. That case dealt with phone records. People may prefer the government stay out of their personal conversations, but the Smith v. Maryland ruling said that if people shared this info with phone companies (an involuntary “sharing” since this information was needed to connect calls and bill phone users), the government could obtain this information without a warrant.
More Mass Surveillance: FOIA Docs Reveal Illegal Snooping On US Residents’ Financial Transactions
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 