General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Snowden, *by law*, needed to do what he did. [View all]LeftyMom
(49,212 posts)In 1979 metadata meant what landline number called another landline number at what time and how long the call lasted. That's it. In 2014, telephone metadata has people's locations down a few feet throughout their day, their call records, who they texted, and information about their web browsing. It's not analogous data and it is vastly more intrusive when it is misused. The very specific ruling you are invoking as justification involved a case where a serious crime was known to have been committed and the use of metadata furthered the investigation, yet you are using it to justify a blanket search. Nothing about the ruling indicates that bulk collection is legal and in any case the data involved is not similar.
Nobody is suggesting that the data provider does not own metadata. However the notion that metadata can be collected in a broad net by the government can not be supported by the ownership of that data by a private party.