I hate it when other people make really good points before I think of them. Please cut that out, especially in public. Makes me look bad.

Yes. It’s true. The police actually — currently — get phone records as part of investigations, and do not require a subpoena or warrant in order to do so. So, in theory, this has been going on for some time. The same way, in theory, the police can “dumpster dive” your trash to find evidence about what you’ve been throwing out.

It’s the difference between public and private information (according to the one family member I have who knows anything about law enforcement and whom I’ve just asked about this subject). The police/government don’t need your permission to go through any of your “public” info, and phone records count as public information.

Score one for Jen, Devil’s Advocate de jour.

I guess what bothers me about the difference between the past version of the police evidence-gathering system and the current/future version is the “routine-ness” of it, and/or the assumptiveness. The idea that *all* or *most* or *much* of our phone traffic will be scanned for “bad” patterns, as opposed to the cops asking specifically for my records if they think I’ve been a bad boy.

To use Jen’s metaphor in reverse, it’s the difference between the cops watching my house because they think I’m a drug dealer, and the government setting up cameras in front of everybody’s house (along with sophisticated pattern matching software) to detect various behaviors after-the-fact.

It’s the difference, to me, at least, between having a cause to start investigating me, and keeping tabs on everyone, at all times, until they register as a “bleep” on some software because their metadata fell off the end of the bell curve.

Knowing how inaccurate and faulty such software can be, and how bad the government’s track record is for things even as simple as road construction, I really hate the idea that they might make decisions about whether or not people should be put under arrest without warrants (which, I’ve read, we’re doing now with suspected terrorists) and taken to other countries for interrogation (see previous comment) based on pattern matching software results.

The whole thing simply makes me nervous as heck.

Do you think it makes a significant difference that one feels private while the other does not?