It's entirely relevant if the expectation of privacy includes the information extracted, but not the underlying individual pieces, but that's somewhat tangential to why I think it's problematic.
> The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The Fourth Amendment doesn't expressly mention privacy, but it does talk about the specificity of the search - and I'd argue that using instruments meant for the collection of lone records to gather entire sets of social information synthesized from those records likely violates both the specificity (they're fishing, not being targeted) and may violate the reasonable requirement.
It's also a possible violation of the First Amendment, as it has an inherently chilling effect on the right to free association if the government is constructing a database of all your interactions with people, for the purpose of later deciding what you did wrong.
1) Is there a reasonable expectation of privacy? This expectation refers to the situation, not the information extracted.
2) If there is a reasonable expectation of privacy, a warrant requiring specific descriptions of what is to be searched is required.
You're right that collecting lots of peoples' information creates a specificity problem in situations where a warrant is required, but if there is no reasonable expectation of privacy to begin with, that prong doesn't even enter into the analysis.
Aren't those "two steps" and the analysis sort of after-the-fact relative to the 4th Amendment itself? I mean, those "There are X steps to a blahblah" things are Supreme Court Rulings from the recent past. Those analyses are the stuff of lawyering, and seem to me to divorce the plain meaning of the US constitution from how it's currently interpreted. The whole 3rd Party Records doctrine stems from such a divorce, and seems to defy the plain wording of the 4th Amendment. It also seems like a petty dodge on the part of law enforcement, frankly. "Oh, not a search, 'cause you let the phone company in on the deal." Sure, but The Phone Company doesn't care what I say in the call, and doesn't have the capacity to record every damn thing I say. Also, there's something of a professional relationship there.
I realize that nothing I wrote would withstand some kind of "N-Prong Test for Violation of Privacy", but that's the point. Those "N-Prong tests" are a way of talking around a violation of privacy.
Note the posture of my comment: talking about the FISC court's ruling. While you're entitled to argue about the merits of the Supreme Court's 4th amendment jurisprudence, the FISC court is not. It must analyze the issues in terms of the framework established by the higher court.
Frankly, I expect better from people as smart as Federal Judges that are outstanding enough to get appointed to a special higher court. I expect them to use logic and reason from first principles as well as coloring between the lines.
I also see "analyze the issues in terms of the framework" as another petty dodge. It appears that lawyers and judges are in some "inner circle", and they are rooking the rest of us of some pretty plainly worded rights by making up "frameworks" and demanding "standing" in order to construct weird Catch-22s that leave people singing that at least they know they're free, but not actually having any such freedoms because of "3 prong tests" for something irrelevant.
> The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The Fourth Amendment doesn't expressly mention privacy, but it does talk about the specificity of the search - and I'd argue that using instruments meant for the collection of lone records to gather entire sets of social information synthesized from those records likely violates both the specificity (they're fishing, not being targeted) and may violate the reasonable requirement.
It's also a possible violation of the First Amendment, as it has an inherently chilling effect on the right to free association if the government is constructing a database of all your interactions with people, for the purpose of later deciding what you did wrong.