[demlosers]

Comments?

[ndt]

thanks for the heads up. Reading.....

[TheEaglehasLanded]

Other than Jeff Sessions did any Republican Senator even mention Supreme Court precedent, the Republican Head of Judiciary wants to investigate Supreme Court precedent being followed.

[ndt]

Actually I'm not sure you saw this from the other thread, but this seems to be about as specific as you can get. Counterintelligence access to telephone toll and transactional records

[sinkspur]

First, it is doubtful that telephone users in general have any expectation of privacy regarding the numbers they dial, since they typically know that they must convey phone numbers to the telephone company and that the company has facilities for recording this information and does in fact record it for various legitimate business purposes. And petitioner did not demonstrate an expectation of privacy merely by using his home phone rather than some other phone, since his conduct, although perhaps calculated to keep the contents of his conversation private, was not calculated to preserve the privacy of the number he dialed. Second, even if petitioner did harbor some subjective expectation of privacy, this expectation was not one that society is prepared to recognize as "reasonable." When petitioner voluntarily conveyed numerical information to the phone company and "exposed" that information to its equipment in the normal course of business, he assumed the risk that the company would reveal the information.

This is a bigger slam-dunk than the international NSA surveillance. This court opinion deals with the privacy of phone numbers tied to a specific person and concluded there is none.

[ndt]

I would say that this ruling is without doubt in the administrations favor. Needless to say I concur with the dissenting opinion but that is a moot point.

That said, the link I posted above very specifically outlines the requirements for accessing this information for counterintelligence purposes. Law being what it is, there might be something else pertinent, if you see something let me know.

The key section below
"The Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or his designee in a position not lower than Deputy Assistant Director at Bureau headquarters or a Special Agent in Charge in a Bureau field office designated by the Director, may...

request the name, address, length of service, and local and long distance toll billing records of a person or entity if the Director (or his designee) certifies in writing to the wire or electronic communication service provider to which the request is made that the name, address, length of service, and toll billing records sought are relevant to an authorized investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities, provided that such an investigation of a United States person is not conducted solely on the basis of activities protected by the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States; and"