Yes. But AFAIK, not an unconstitutional one. Wyden agrees with you:
> Wyden said buying information on Americans without obtaining a warrant was an “outrageous end-run around the Fourth Amendment,”
America needs privacy laws for this reason (or an amendment, but good luck). Vote when November rolls around; the other piece is finding Democrats that will take an actual stance on privacy closer to Wyden's.
I think that the problem is that it absolutely does violate the constitution, we just have judges willing to defend it and say otherwise even when it clearly allows for exactly what the fourth amendment was intended to prevent.
(IANAL) I meant that statement in the sense of "in the current jurisprudence". AIUI, because the companies are willingly giving up the data, it's not a search and thus no warrant is required; companies could tell the government to take a hike. But why would they, when a buck could be made? And we treat the data as being the company's, b/c its on their servers, etc. As for when customers gave it to companies, again, this is treated as voluntary: you could have, in theory, not used that company.
Now, again, I don't necessarily agree with that position: many companies here are monopolies, or their market has so little competition that all their competitors do it as well. Also, with no downside to it, I don't see why a company isn't going to sell their customers' data, and if not them, then some company that might acquire them down the road. Futher, some companies even just outright lie to customers about this.
But again, the current government is unwilling to enforce any sort of extant consumer protection law, and much of the above boils down to "… because America has no privacy laws." So, we're back to "if you want it, vote for it". The GOP is fundamentally opposed to regulation of business, but even the Democrats have been really tepid around privacy laws and consumer protection.
Yes. But AFAIK, not an unconstitutional one. Wyden agrees with you:
> Wyden said buying information on Americans without obtaining a warrant was an “outrageous end-run around the Fourth Amendment,”
America needs privacy laws for this reason (or an amendment, but good luck). Vote when November rolls around; the other piece is finding Democrats that will take an actual stance on privacy closer to Wyden's.
I think that the problem is that it absolutely does violate the constitution, we just have judges willing to defend it and say otherwise even when it clearly allows for exactly what the fourth amendment was intended to prevent.
(IANAL) I meant that statement in the sense of "in the current jurisprudence". AIUI, because the companies are willingly giving up the data, it's not a search and thus no warrant is required; companies could tell the government to take a hike. But why would they, when a buck could be made? And we treat the data as being the company's, b/c its on their servers, etc. As for when customers gave it to companies, again, this is treated as voluntary: you could have, in theory, not used that company.
Now, again, I don't necessarily agree with that position: many companies here are monopolies, or their market has so little competition that all their competitors do it as well. Also, with no downside to it, I don't see why a company isn't going to sell their customers' data, and if not them, then some company that might acquire them down the road. Futher, some companies even just outright lie to customers about this.
But again, the current government is unwilling to enforce any sort of extant consumer protection law, and much of the above boils down to "… because America has no privacy laws." So, we're back to "if you want it, vote for it". The GOP is fundamentally opposed to regulation of business, but even the Democrats have been really tepid around privacy laws and consumer protection.