This is completely, and I mean completely different. There's no expectation of privacy in a 7-11. As such, the two situations are incomparable despite their superficial similarity.
Whether there's an expectation of privacy online is unclear, and the government is trying to capitalize on this by setting a precedent.
1) The "expectation of privacy" must be objectively reasonable. It's objectively true that phone call records are not private: they are kept by the phone company in the ordinary course of business and many people have access to them. As a purely factual matter, a lot more people (people who, unlike the 7-11 clerk, you've never even met!) have access to your data at a phone company than at a 7-11. So any subjective belief that those details are private is not objectively reasonable.
2) Callers have no ownership or control over call records. Even if you don't subscribe to the "property rights" view of the 4th amendment, you have to admit that it's less reasonable to have an expectation of privacy in something someone else owns and controls. It's not reasonable to expect privacy as to a 7-11's recordings of what you do on its premises because they own the recordings and control the premises. Similarly, it's not reasonable to expect privacy as to AT&T's records of what you do on its telephone network.
Why am I not surprised that our laws are underpinned by a paradox.
> It's objectively true that phone call records are not private
By this standard, is anything private? If I have a home security system run by a third party, does that mean my front door is not private because I share it with ADT? Maybe instead of getting a warrant LEOs can request ADT to unlock the front door.
> you have to admit that it's less reasonable to have an expectation of privacy in something someone else owns and controls
My phone is controlled by apple. My car is controlled by on-star. My money is controlled by visa. It sounds like the only reasonable expectation to privacy is in your own brain.. for now.
My question is, why limit dragnet surveillance to only metadata? It seems arbitrary to not also record full transcripts -- if we really don't have any expectation to privacy.
The difference is that phone companies don't record full transcripts. Just like my kinect isn't recording my room right now. That's why I have a reasonable expectation of privacy even though there is a kinect in the room.
But I don't have an expectation that the requests I make to xbox is private.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/penta...
> Specifically, Petraeus acknowledged providing eight notebooks containing highly classified material to his biographer, Paula Broadwell, in the waning days of his Army career.
And yet
> In April, after a lengthy investigation by the FBI that disgraced the onetime military hero, Petraeus pleaded guilty in federal court in North Carolina to a misdemeanor charge of mishandling classified materials. He was sentenced to two years of probation and fined $100,000.
And I don't understand your example at all, as it argues in my favor. Starbucks is generally regarded as having no expectation of privacy.
Questions relates to how tech has changed this and it's clear it has.
Until there's one set of rules for expectations related to privacy, it will be exploited by anyone able to do so.
It seems untenable to me that all rights to privacy in our metadata are entirely subverted by their being owned by telecom companies. It's not as if I'm arguing that warrantless access to metadata is a good thing. But there must be a better argument than "this feels wrong".