On Second Thought: Why Was Verizon's Challenge To Bulk Phone Records Collection So Weak?
from the you-can-do-better-than-that dept
On Friday we wrote about an unnamed phone company apparently challenging the FISA Court's order to hand over certain phone records on basically every phone call, noting that the FISA Court shot down that challenge. The phone company was not identified, but the Washington Post says that people have confirmed that it's Verizon. That isn't all that surprising. As far as we know, the Section 215 bulk phone record orders are mainly used on Verizon and AT&T, but not other, smaller phone companies.In our post, we suggested the nameless telco deserved kudos for actually challenging the order, but in retrospect, the company only deserves very partial kudos. First, assuming it's Verizon, the company has been receiving these orders every three months for something close to eight years. And it just challenged them now? Second, the challenged relied entirely on Judge Richard Leon's ruling from December that found the Section 215 program unconstitutional. Verizon did not make any specific statutory or constitutional challenges itself to the order. It just pointed to Judge Leon's ruling and said that, based on that ruling, it was questioning the order. In fact, it's not even clear if Verizon was actively challenging the order, or just asking for clarification based on Judge Leon's ruling.
That's a fairly weak challenge, and allowed FISC judge Rosemary Collyer to just handwave away Judge Leon's arguments, without Verizon having to present any real arguments itself. It's a challenge, certainly, but a rather weak one that Verizon had to know it would lose, and which didn't require much effort at all.
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Filed Under: fisa court, fisc, richard leon, rosemary collyer, section 215
Companies: verizon
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Money...
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Shocker
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Misery...
A business will never waste money on a customers behalf when it does not fit into their advertised business model. Verizon is a Whore Corp purchased for near exclusive use by the US Government.
Businesses never needed unique protections and classifications but because people are universally stupid it appears that they are needed.
Now, government and courts consistently use 'Third Party' doctrine to remove every possible Constitutional Right you have. Its one of the biggest breaches of Citizens Rights that has ever occurred in this nation and proves that.
The 4th is clear as a bell ringing loudly in all but the most corrupt of ears. Your personal information and property never loses protection regardless of where you put it 2nd, 3rd, unto an Infinite number of parties, unless you put it somewhere that is declared PUBLIC!
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Why was Smith vs Maryland applicable here
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Re: Why was Smith vs Maryland applicable here
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RIAA v. Verizon
Unfortunately, even tenacious privacy advocates like Verizon tend to fold without so much as a whimper when the government starts knocking and utters those magic words, national security .
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Re: RIAA v. Verizon
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Verizon and its "service"
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