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Comment by throwaway0a5e | Hacker News Reader

Data held by 3rd parties falls under "papers and effects".

Not really. It’s the service’s papers and effects, which happen to contain information about you.

There’s obviously something very wrong here, but it’s a dead end to say no one can sell the government info about people. Need a different approach in the vein of outlawing crazy TOSs, keeping user ownership of their data even if used to make a service operate, right to be forgotten, etc.

As far as I know, a warrant is required to tap a landline phone. I don't see how the principle behind that (reasonable) interpretation of the 4th amendment would not also apply to any kind of data (or metadata) from Internet traffic. Just because some 3rd party collected what is, by legal precedent, clearly considered personal effects and papers does not mean that 3rd party can grant absolution to the government in its need for a warrant to obtain that same data.

Telephones actually have a specific exemption to what’s called Third Party Doctrine: the government’s right to acquire information sans warrant when that information is lawfully held by a third party.

Telcos are exempt for exactly the reason you mention: phones are really important to daily life and they collect tons of sensitive data as a side effect of normal use.

IMO this is one of the more viable routes to getting this behavior changed: expand Third Party Doctrine exemptions to a lot more services, but to do that we’d have to confront just how much data we’re choosing to share, and whether we’re actually choosing to share it.

According to what law or precedent?

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