Snowden, *by law*, needed to do what he did.

[neverforget]

96. The suspect was an individual suspected of robbery, a criminal offense. That is suspicion. Otherwise

why would the police go to the phone company for this one particular individual? He was suspected of robbery. How does that translate into gathering metadata on all Americans?

Justice Marshall dissenting Smith v Maryland:

"But even assuming, as I do not, that individuals “typically know” that a phone company monitors calls for internal reasons,ante at 442 U. S. 743, [Footnote 3/1] it does not follow that they expect this information to be made available to the public in general or the government in particular. Privacy is not a discrete commodity, possessed absolutely or not at all. Those who disclose certain facts to a bank or phone company for a limited business purpose need not assume that this information will be released to other persons for other purposes."

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"More fundamentally, to make risk analysis dispositive in assessing the reasonableness of privacy expectations would allow the government to define the scope of Fourth Amendment protections. For example, law enforcement officials, simply by announcing their intent to monitor the content of random samples of first-class mail or private phone conversations, could put the public on notice of the risks they would thereafter assume in such communications."

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"Just as one who enters a public telephone booth is "entitled to assume that the words he utters into the mouthpiece will not be broadcast to the world," Katz v. United States, supra, at 352, so too, he should be entitled to assume that the numbers he dials in the privacy of his home will be recorded, if at all, solely for the phone company's business purposes. Accordingly, I would require law enforcement officials to obtain a warrant before they enlist telephone companies to secure information otherwise beyond the government's reach."