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Comment by smokeyj | Hacker News Reader

> objectively reasonable

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.

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Unlocking your front door is an action, not information that ADT has generated about you. Also, whether or not your door is unlocked has little bearing on whether investigators can enter your private house. Can you generate a better example?

My point is people expect privacy even when sharing information with third parties. Just because your xbox kinect is always watching and amazon echo listening - doesn't mean the average consumer doesn't expect privacy.

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.

People don't expect privacy when sharing information with third parties, they expect confidentiality. But the law doesn't respect that. If you tell me in confidence, that you kidnapped the Limburg baby, I can legally tell whoever I want. I can even be forced by the government to tell them everything I know.

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.

So... You're telling us Snowden isn't guilty of treason. All he did was leak CONFIDENTIAL files...

cf Petraeus.

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 yet all you have as a rebuttal is someone who PLEADED guilty, not who was convicted... I love the US kangaroo courts, where hardly anybody ever goes to trial.

We may not have an expectation of privacy in the specific records the phone company keeps to bill us and manage their networks, but we have always had an expectation of privacy in the contents of the calls themselves.

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