Perhaps because someone has the right to not answer questions? Whereas if Verizon sends my data to the feds, I had no say in the matter?
Your position seems to be that you'd rather have planes fly into the world trade center than give up your "freedom" from having your phone number in a government database.
No, my position is the feds can't even handle the data they have - they need to figure out how to handle their existing data stream before doing this. And second, the Bill of Rights exists for a purpose - to keep government under control. Compare the number of people killed by terrorists over the last 100 years to the number of people killed by their own governments. No comparison.
So while I recognize that wartime does call for the rules to be bent, if you allow the government to ignore the constraints completely, you are inviting the potential for totalitarianism into this country. And history shows we should be just as concerned about that as we are about al Qaeda.
My point was that if all the neighbors give information about you, that information can be used to get a warrant to search your house -- it has nothing to do with you giving out information yourself.
Not a great analogy -- you don't have a business arrangement with your neighbors. I was approaching from the idea that the government has a right to collect information they can about you from other sources.
If they didn't force Verizon to hand over the info, and they didn't break into Verizon to steal the info, your beef is with Verizon, not the government.
I thought we were arguing that the government had no right to invade your privacy by getting and keeping these records. That was the issue I was addressing.