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.' (Washington Post, Wednesday)
Then anyone expecting such privacy must be unreasonable.
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