It is still a search. Gawd, what is so difficult to grasp about that? Unless I am suspected of some kind of criminal or terrorist action, the government has NO BUSINESS looking at who I have called. There is NO PROBABLE CAUSE in obtaining the entire Verizon phone list - and I blame Verizon as much as I blame the fedgov for this one. They should have refused to provide the entire file.
I have no problem with calling records being provided due to probable cause. In a time of war, I would even be willing to lower the bar for what constitutes probable cause. But not the entire file. That is just a complete stomp on basic rights against unwarranted searches.
People are defending it because "our people" are doing it. It is absolute bull crap. If Hillary & Bill ordered the NSA to record the numbers of every phone call made in the US, I am so fracking sure that people would be saying it was a good thing to piss on our rights.
You are so stuck on yourself, you keep saying their compiling a list on YOU of YOUR yada yada yada. No they're not, it's got nothing to do with YOU. The NSA doesn't even know it's YOU. They don't know who the blank it is and they don't care. It is to see patterns of numbers calling other numbers, if anything looks tied to terrorism (and they have their intel ways of deciding), they can get a warrant to listen in. So your phone company may know you by name and account number but NSA does not, and could not care less. But go ahead and acuse the rest of us who aren't borderline of all kinds of stuff. I just consider the source and it rolls right off me.
Sorry, but this battle was lost long ago. FDR and every president since (and maybe before) has used warrantless wiretapping in national security cases. Since there's no warrant the material can't be introduced in court; hence, it was often difficult to get convictions of Cold-War era spies -- see, for example, the 1945 Amerasia Case.
Data mining is just a logical update of these practices and probably not new post-9/11. In this instance, computers pick out suspicious patterns. By the time any human being looks at your call records, YOU ARE SUSPECTED.
Electronic communications take place over networks that are privately owned but government regulated. Just so, state troopers can set up speed traps on highways. They don't have to have probable cause to suspect that you personally are prone to speeding in order to target their equipment on you.
Anthony Scalia (in Kyllo): "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 (1979), "
Smith v. Maryland: "...This Court consistently has held that a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he [442 U.S. 735, 744] voluntarily turns over to third parties. E. g., United States v. Miller, 425 U.S., at 442 -444; Couch v. United States, 409 U.S., at 335 -336; United States v. White, 401 U.S., at 752 (plurality opinion); Hoffa v. United States, 385 U.S. 293, 302 (1966); Lopez v. United States, 373 U.S. 427 (1963). In Miller, for example, the Court held that a bank depositor has no "legitimate `expectation of privacy'" in financial information "voluntarily conveyed to . . . banks and exposed to their employees in the ordinary course of business." 425 U.S., at 442 . The Court explained: "The depositor takes the risk, in revealing his affairs to another, that the information will be conveyed by that person to the Government. . . .
This Court has held repeatedly that the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit the obtaining of information revealed to a third party and conveyed by him to Government authorities, even if the information is revealed on the assumption that it will be used only for a limited purpose and the confidence placed in the third party will not be betrayed." Id., at 443. "
Third party databases and government use of them is a problem that keeps coming up. It's past time for an examination by the legislature of what would be good public policy on the issue.
"It is still a search." No, it's not. The information belongs to the phone company, not you. They sell it to whomever they want. Qwest was only pissed because they weren't getting any money.