What makes a phone call over a wireless carrier worthy of more protection that a private text chat between two people?
(The former being protected by federal wiretapping laws that have been around a looooong time)
(The former being protected by federal wiretapping laws that have been around a looooong time)
Additionally, something that is different is the scale. In the US, an activity may be legal if done once but if done millions of times it may be illegal. Here, there are many times more people plotting, discussing, and celebrating terrorist events online than there are on traditional phone calls. Having phone calls be traditionally 1-1 and private internet chats be 1-many, even 1-1000000 or 1 to 7000000000 if public, is a totally different beast. I'm not sure there is any analogous previous laws, I think we need new laws.