'I Have Been to the Darkest Corners of Government, and What They Fear Is Light'

[Maedhros]

162. Thank you for the words of support.

There is so much effort expended on this forum to justify what the NSA is doing, when it is clear that bulk surveillance is incompatible with democracy.

Some more useful links:

Judge Richard Leon's ruling that the NSA's metadata collection is unconstitutional:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/12/17/us/politics/17nsa-ruling.html?_r=0

Justice Sonia Sotomayor's opinions from United States v. Jones:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/10-1259#writing-10-1259_CONCUR_4

... it may be necessary to reconsider the premise that an individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy in information voluntarily disclosed to third parties. This approach is ill suited to the digital age, in which people reveal a great deal of information about themselves to third parties in the course of carrying out mundane tasks. People disclose the phone numbers that they dial or text to their cellular providers; the URLs that they visit and the e-mail addresses with which they correspond to their Internet service providers; and the books, groceries, and medications they purchase to online retailers. Perhaps, as JUSTICE ALITO notes, some people may find the "tradeoff" of privacy for convenience "worthwhile," or come to accept this "diminution of privacy" as "inevitable," and perhaps not. I for one doubt that people would accept without complaint the warrantless disclosure to the Government of a list of every Web site they had visited in the last week, or month, or year.

But whatever the societal expectations, they can attain constitutionally protected status only if our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence ceases to treat secrecy as a prerequisite for privacy. I would not assume that all information voluntarily disclosed to some member of the public for a limited purpose is, for that reason alone, disentitled to Fourth Amendment protection.