More Than Just Phone Book Data: Why the Government is Dangerously Misleading on its Warrantless Demands for Internet Subscriber Information - Michael Geist

More Than Just Phone Book Data: Why the Government is Dangerously Misleading on its Warrantless Demands for Internet Subscriber Information - Michael Geist

Government and law enforcement justifications for warrantless access to Internet subscriber information has long been defended on the grounds that the information being demanded carries little privacy interest. The go-to claim was always that it was “phone book information”, a reference to the largely discontinued practice of printing an annual public directory that included name, address, and phone number. The problem with that argument was that