General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: The abuse of FISA, prosecuting whistleblowers, PRISM, kill lists. Guess what. It isn't about Obama [View all]pnwmom
(110,338 posts)and it decided that collecting telephone meta-data wasn't in violation of the fourth amendment.
So maybe the "plain meaning" of the 4th amendment isn't so plain.
http://prospect.org/article/three-guiding-principles-nsa-reform
Yet, to even begin the discussion of reform, we have to grapple with why things got to where they are. One document published in the Guardian shows a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court order for Verizon, the telecommunications giant, to hand over phone metadata (telephone numbers, call length, and location). The Supreme Court ruled in 1979 that the Fourth Amendment does not protect such metadata. Similarly, the PRISM data-mining program, which automates access to Internet company databases, was, misreporting aside, publicly discussed as a software platform used by the military and intelligence community for many years.