What really warrants collecting warrantless metadata?
To the Editor:
(Reference “My View: Phone metadata an index, not eavesdropping” online at skyhidailynews.com June 20)
We U.S. citizens live in a country that consists of laws and legal process. We even enjoy the foundational protection of a 225 year-old document (U.S. Constitution) that guarantees certain freedoms of citizens’ vs. limitations of government (the State).
In instances where the constitutionally bestowed rights of citizens (human persons) and the prerogatives of government appear wildly in conflict, the judiciary system (courts-at-law) determine what is legally allowable and what is illegally impermissible (wrong on the side of political left or political right, depending).
Were I not so ripe with years, I wouldn’t know that the U.S. judiciary is rife with humans whose biases, prejudices and creative legal interpretations actually color the overtly, black and white nature of disputable law and its indisputable application. Consider the case of “Citizens United vs. FEC”, whereby legally structured corporations were bestowed the legal status of “human persons” in select, legal situations.
I’m awfully glad that “collecting metadata” is not “eavesdropping”…and that a warrant issued by a court at law is required to search and seize the details of my metadata phone calls, emails and other private communications…at present, pending further legal deliberation and interpretation.
Oh well. No one said that our legal system of laws and process would ever be more than imperfect. Which leads me to wonder, is imperfect a situational term, such as the phrase “collecting warrantless metadata must be perfectly warranted unless is it is considered eavesdropping and clearly just too snoopy?”
Some Supreme Autobot with the highest legal authority needs to meld scholarly legal minds into agreement, about what constitutes communication between persons who will never agree on rhetorical concepts in whose favor, pending further legal deliberation and interpretation toward freedom and justice for all, depending.
Jerry Shafer Jordan