This law review article is from 2008. In it, the author explains why a call records retention program of the sort that has now been disclosed would be an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment Right to Freedom of Association.

Recent controversies about the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping of international calls have overshadowed equally disturbing allegations that the government has acquired access to a huge database of domestic call traffic data, revealing information about times, dates, and numbers called. Although communication content traditionally has been the primary focus of concern about overreaching government surveillance, law enforcement officials are increasingly interested in using sophisticated computer analysis of noncontent traffic data to map networks of associations. Despite the rising importance of digitally mediated association, current Fourth Amendment and statutory schemes provide only weak checks on government. The potential to chill association through overreaching relational surveillance is great. This Article argues that the First Amendment's freedom of association guarantees can and do provide a proper framework for regulating relational surveillance and suggests how these guarantees might apply to particular forms of analysis of traffic data.

Quoting from the article:

The First Amendment’s freedom of association guarantees require that any program of relational surveillance meet a strict scrutiny standard. The surveillance must serve a legitimate and compelling government interest and its methodology must be sufficiently accurate and narrowly tailored to that interest in light of the extent to which it is likely to expose protected expressive and intimate associations.

The collection of all meta-data for everyone all of the time is not "narrowly tailored" and hence it would fail strict scrutiny. The Government's program is unconstitutional.

Freedom of Association in a Networked World: First Amendment Regulation of Relational Surveillance by Katherine J. Strandburg :: SSRN

The public disclosure of classified documents by Edward Snowden has been a polarizing issue, particularly among my friends and colleagues in the infosec world, who pay close attention to matters involving civil liberties, national security, and the Internet. The thing that I have found most disappointing about this whole affair is the need that people have to rationalize their feelings about it by ignoring its reality. I've seen a number of very smart people, for whom I have tremendous professional respect, twist the facts of this situation inside out in order to create simple, morally clear narratives that are utterly wrong.

It is this aspect of human nature that makes political discussions so difficult. We approach challenging controversies with the desire to affirm our own sense of identity and our self interests. Often, the best way to accomplish that, is a selective reading of the facts.

Partisan pundits are professionals who specialize in weaving these narratives for us. They take a set of facts, emphasize and exaggerate some of them, and ignore or minimize others, in order to reach a conclusion that is emotionally satisfying. Having established that the facts clearly lead to a particular conclusion, they then proceed to attack anyone who reaches a different conclusion for not having their "facts straight."

Part of the problem is that we just aren't very good at putting ourselves into other people's shoes, particularly other people that we are angry with.

Its easy to discard facts that don't have any personal relevance for you. In order to understand the relevance to someone else, you've got to go to a lot of effort to understand their circumstances and their point of view. Then you've got to incorporate their legitimate interests into the narrative, leading to a conclusion that is less clearly about you.

It is much easier to just disregard the other side or ridicule them than to respect them and take their interests seriously in this way and risk having to make compromises with them. We want to feel a certain way about a given situation and we're just not interested in points of view that make us uncomfortable. So we construct echo chambers where other people who are just like us tell us how insightful they find our narrow views. People seem to do this regardless of how smart they are, how informed they are, or what part of the political spectrum they are on.

Many of the facts that we ignore and dismiss through this process have more relevance for us upon careful examination than they did at first glance, but we rarely get far enough to figure that out.

Four Americas

In light of these observations, the way that peo... [ Read More (3.8k in body) ]

RIP Jim Kelly

Black Belt Jones - Intro - YouTube

Secret documents viewed by SPIEGEL reveal that the American intelligence service monitors around half a billion telephone calls, emails and text messages in the country every day.

NSA Spies on 500 Million German Data Connections - SPIEGEL ONLINE

Back in 2005, when the New York Times reported that the NSA was engaged in probably-illegal wiretapping, it ignited a nationwide firestorm...

One of a string of outrages that Senator Barack Obama used to denounce in his campaign speech as a sort of incantation when he was running for the presidency in 2008. And that’s why, for a certain sort of idealistic liberal, this man Obama was the most desirable presidential candidate imaginable, and why so many greeted his election as something like a deliverance from evil.

And today it is Obama himself who countenances something very similar to “warrantless wiretaps...” He has flown in the face of what he seemed to stand for—of what he promised in fact: open government, a respect for privacy and for the rule of law.

Those who wonder why a politician would do such a thing must remember how statesmanship is practiced, American-style. To snub and even to wound your most zealous supporters, as Obama has done, is regarded as a mark of maturity in Washington. This is not because snubbing or wounding them is a brave thing to do, but exactly the opposite: Because the righteous attitude of the idealist is repugnant to the men of power, who know that idealists are, in fact, men of weakness, entitled to neither courtesy nor respect.

Freedom: The Big American Lie - Debatten - FAZ

The two programs violate both the letter and the spirit of federal law. No statute explicitly authorizes mass surveillance.

The Criminal N.S.A. - NYTimes.com

Binney explains that how ThinThreat was built to track electronic activities — phone calls, emails, banking and travel records, social media , etc. — and map them to collect "all the attributes that any individual has" in every type of activity and build a real-time profile based on that data.

NSA Whistleblower William Binney Was Right - Business Insider

June 20, 2013

The American Civil Liberties Union will be in federal court tomorrow asking a judge to declare unconstitutional the government's practice of banning people from flying without giving them any notice, reasons, or meaningful way to clear their names.

Federal Judge None Too Impressed With Government's Defense Of Its 'No Fly' List | Techdirt

"They certainly have the technical capacity and assert they have the authority," said Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy advocacy group. "Given the history of deceptive and misleading statements from the [national intelligence director], I cannot take the government at its word that, despite its technical capacity and belief in its authority, it simply chooses not to track location."

NSA didn't collect cellphone location data, U.S. officials say - latimes.com

"It is clear that revelations about NSA surveillance programs have damaged Obama's standing with the public, although older controversies like the IRS matter may have begun to take their toll as well," adds Holland.

Details on NSA-thwarted plots coming, lawmaker says

Six in 10 disapprove of how Obama is handling government surveillance of U.S. citizens, which is higher than the 52% who disapproved of George W. Bush on the same issue in 2006, when government surveillance was also in the headlines.

CNN Poll: Obama approval falls amid controversies – CNN Political Ticker - CNN.com Blogs