Fergie's Tech Blog

Gonzales Defends Phone-Data Collection

Walter Pincus writes in The Washington Post:

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said yesterday that the government can obtain domestic telephone records without court approval under a 1979 Supreme Court ruling that authorized the collection of business records.

Gonzales would not confirm the details of a May 11 story in USA Today, which said the National Security Agency had collected phone records of millions of Americans and analyzed them to search for terrorism plots. But Gonzales told reporters that, under the Smith v. Maryland ruling, "those kinds of records do not enjoy Fourth Amendment protection. There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in those kinds of records."

The case involved the police, without a court warrant, asking a telephone company to install at its central office a surveillance device called a "pen register" that recorded all the numbers of a robbery suspect's outgoing calls.

Because the device was installed in a phone company's central office, the Supreme Court ruled that there was no invasion of the person's home. And because the telephone account owner knew, through a monthly bill, that the numbers dialed created a phone company record, there was no expectation of privacy and no violation of the Fourth Amendment that otherwise would have required a court warrant, the court said.

posted by Fergie @ 5/24/2006 10:43:00 AM