Your’re also wrongly conflating the communication itself with records of the communication having ocurred. The communications themselves are unmolested by this program.

No I am not. Read the ECPA.

a provider of electronic communication service or remote computing service shall disclose a record

or other information pertaining to a subscriber to or customer of such service

[e.g. a phone number, which is a uniquely identifying piece of information that corresponds directly to a customer -- ed] (not including the contents of communications covered by subsection (a) or (b) of this section) [ergo this is talking not about the contents of the communication, but about something less... something like a phone log with uniquely identifying information -- ed] to a governmental entity only when the governmental entity

[etc]

That’s the law. That’s the law AFTER the SCOTUS decision, a law which was specifically constructed to bridge the gap that the SCOTUS decision addressed. (see).

Unless you can find me a SCOTUS decision that invalidates that ECPA (i.e. after the fact), it’s still valid law.

And according to the Telecommunications Act of 1996 the records are owned by the serving companies, are not private and can be used by authorized governmental agencies and law enforcement.

With a warrant or subpoena! Why do you think Qwest refused? Why do you think they refused when the government threatened to never give them another government contract if they did? Because there was no warrant or subpoena, so it was against the law, as they read it.

I can’t order a pizza without the government receiving notice.

That’s not exactly true, is it? And if it were, so what? You can still make the call, right? You can still order the pie, right? How does someone knowing about it restrict your liberty?

If the government gets records of Verizon calls, then it is true. And I didn’t say it prevented me from making the call… it prevented me from making the call and having that record be private from the government. My electronic communications have expectations of privacy and freedom from government search without due cause as outlined in the ECPA, as a clarification of the fourth amendment.

“The government knows…” does not qualify as liberty lost.

Depends on how they got the information. By itself, no, it doesn’t qualify. If my phone company turned over a pen register (i.e. call log) without warrant or subpoena, then it does qualify as liberty lost as guaranteed by the fourth amendment and as elucidated by 1986′s ECPA.

Cary,

Your liberty does NOT trump security.

“And I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m SECURE.”

“The land of the SECURE and the home of the brave.”

“Life, SECURITY, and the pursuit of happiness”

I do not like your vision of America. Sounds like an America without guns, an America without freedom from governmental insight into every aspect of private lives. Security, frankly, is the goal of communists, socialists, and other such people who long ago sold out freedom in favor of lesser virtues.

Milano,

The authorities need reasonable access to information in order to detect and stop criminals BEFORE they commit crimes.

This has never been the job of the government or the police. Their job is to investigate crimes that have already taken place. When you call 9/11, you have no legal expectation that anyone will show up. Go buy a gun. The government isn’t your private bodyguard.

It is amazing to watch them ask where did President Bush and the NSA get the authority from???? How come the MSM and their allies were not outraged then? Prosecute leakers who endanger our security…..

Loose lips sink ships means nothing to the MSM anymore:|

I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking, doesn’t Quest’s refusal to cooperate with the government constitute violation of the law Mr. Clinton signed back in ’94 (I think)?

Mark, my question cannot be answered with a noun. Your’re also wrongly conflating the communication itself with records of the communication having ocurred. The communications themselves are unmolested by this program. The SCOTUS has found that you have no expectation of privacy regarding such records. And according to the Telecommunications Act of 1996 the records are owned by the serving companies, are not private and can be used by authorized governmental agencies and law enforcement.

I can’t order a pizza without the government receiving notice.

That’s not exactly true, is it? And if it were, so what? You can still make the call, right? You can still order the pie, right? How does someone knowing about it restrict your liberty?

“I don’t like it.” does not equal “My liberty has been infringed upon.”

If you want to talk about lost liberties, let’s talk about them. But first I need to know what they are, and “The government knows…” does not qualify as liberty lost.

We restict freedom when we impose martial law, set curfews. We are in a war.

This is not a traditional war against a defined enemy. It’s a war against a concept… a concept that is unlikely to go away no matter how hard we combat it (and you have to ask yourself, do we want to eliminate Islamic radicalism, or just its violent outbursts?). This war, and its resulting reductions in freedom, could very well be indefinite. Bush said himself that we’re never going to win this war, in the traditional sense. There will be no signing of a treaty, no sudden restoration of our freedoms. If we want our freedoms to be restored, we have to be continuously holding them close, so that our leaders must work hard to justify their removal, and assure use that the removal is temporary.

There is an accountability process going on here. There was negotiation between the phone companies and the government.

The negotiations were one-sided, at least according to Quest executives. The government basically told them “turn over the logs, or you can kiss any chance of getting a government contract goodbye.” Quest executives looked at the law, and very prudently decided that turning the logs over to the government would be illegal, likely based on this law:

a provider of electronic communication service or remote computing service shall disclose a record or other information pertaining to a subscriber to or customer of such service (not including the contents of communications covered by subsection (a) or (b) of this section) to a governmental entity only when the governmental entity–

(i) uses an administrative subpoena authorized by a Federal or State statute, or a Federal or State grand jury subpoena;
(ii)obtains a warrant issued under the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure or equivalent State warrant;
(iii)obtains a court order for such disclosure under subsection (d) of this section; or
(iv) has the consent of the subscriber or customer to such disclosure.

Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986

Pablo,

Mark, “spying on the phone logs” may be the silliest phrase I’ll read all day. Exactly what liberty do you think this program takes away, and how so?

The privacy of my electronic communications, as guaranteed by the ECPA.

How are you less free if the govenment has access to records the phone company is already keeping anyway?

My communications are no longer private. I can’t order a pizza without the government receiving notice. It’s not illegal for the phone company to have those logs.

Mark, “spying on the phone logs” may be the silliest phrase I’ll read all day. Exactly what liberty do you think this program takes away, and how so? How are you less free if the govenment has access to records the phone company is already keeping anyway? How does this knowledge falling into even the most devious hands erode your personal freedom?

Exactly what power is that, Mark? The power to look at stuff? As long as the phone companies keep the records, they also have that power. Don’t like it? Write letters. Speak in person. Don’t make phone calls.

You make a phone call, there’s a record of it. It may be a phone call to you, but it’s a business transaction to them. Proceed with that knowledge in mind, and you can be just as private as you like. In the meantime, I like the idea that when we find a jihadi phone # we can analyze the calls made to and from it and find out who the guys friends are and who their friends are.

Now, if a call has been placed to my hypothetical pizza shop, and perhaps I have a *gasp* financial relationship with said jihadi (‘cuz we sold him a pie), am I really supposed to give a damn that the FBI/NSA might look at me long enough to figure out that there’s not much to look at after all? Maybe they stop by with a pic and ask me if I know the guy and what I know about him. Have my liberties been violated? If so, how?

“spying on the phone logs” may be the silliest phrase I’ll see all day.

Why this outcry, but no outcry when the former first lady was collecting FBI files for malicious political purposes? We have a civil war going on that is more dangerous than the war on terror, and this civil war is being fought against this country by a core group of people who have NO regard for law and order, and a greater priority for thier own personal power than for the good of the country.

You only need worry about the NSA if you’re a member of Al-Queda.

How can you possibly know this? Do you run the NSA? Are you willing to swear on your mother that you’ll never use the information collected for malevolent purposes?

The simple fact is that the people who run our government, whoever they may be, whatever party they call their own, will always be unworthy of this kind of power over American citizens. Your endorsement of this kind of domestic spying hinges upon something that has never, and will never be true: that all government officials and employees are benevolent, trustworthy individuals with no ulterior motives, whatsoever.

You were painfully aware of this fact when Bill Clinton was in office, but seem to have forgotten it in the post-9/11 exaltation of “safety” as an essential freedom.

“Safety” is far from a component of freedom. In most cases, it is antithetical to it. If your goal was to maximize your safety, well, you’d be zipped up in a straight jacket in a solitary confinement padded room in a maximum security prison. To maximize safety, you have to minimize freedom. At the end of the day, you have a choice as to what your political philosophy has as a goal: safety or freedom. You may be able to get away with slight compromises… i.e. having to present a photo ID at the voting booth, but when you’re cheering the government for spying on the phone logs of every single law-abiding American, you’ve clearly ruled in favor of safety over freedom.

A lot of the flak Bush and the NSA are getting about this may indeed be coming from the Left (who, ironically, are usually the biggest fans of the “safety over freedom” concept), but don’t let your disgust for them blind you to the incremental surrender of your freedom.

I was at work when Saddam was captured. A lib co-worker said “Oh great, now Bush is gonna get re-elected!” She’d rather see Saddam on the run so as to hurt Dubya’s re-election chances. I bet everytime a liberal reporter (redundant) says “An American soldier was killed in Iraq today” he/she has to fight to contain their glee. Inside, they’re thinkin’ “YES!! One less Republican voter! One more drop in Dubya’s poll numbers!”

The left hates Bush more than they hate the wackjobs trying to kill us. ALL of us.

(And I won’t get into those business reply cards where people write the credit card numbers and SSNs on the back….)

In 1979, the Supreme Court ruled that “it is not a search for the police to use a pen register at the phone company to determine what numbers were dialed in a private home.” Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 743-744, 99 S.Ct. 2577, 61 L.Ed.2d 220 (1979)). In this case the police, WITHOUT A WARRANT, requested the phone company (which complied with the request) to install a “pen register” to record the numbers dialed from the telephone at petitioner’s home.

There was no expectation of privacy in the numbers dialed — only the contents of the conversations — which is the same issue in the newest “NSA scandal.”

Check out the case at http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=442&invol=735

It’s good to see the NSA doing thier job of gathering intelligence.

Check out these two absurd points by Zack Exley at the Huffington Post:
1) Bush already had the freedom to spy on anyone he wanted……