What privacy?

A news report today tells us that government agencies have been bypassing the need to get subpoenas and warrants by obtaining telephone records and other information on private citizens from data brokers. I'm guessing this practice is now dated, since the government claims it now has a legal right to get anything it wants without a warrant or a subpoena, but it does show the lengths the government will go to to get stuff it shouldn't have. In this case, rather than break the law itself, the government encouraged the data brokers to break the law. Once they had done so, it was perfectly legal for the government to buy the data from them.

These brokers, many of whom advertise aggressively on the Internet, have gotten into customer accounts online, tricked phone companies into revealing information and even acknowledged that their practices violate laws, according to documents gathered by congressional investigators and provided to The Associated Press.

... Whitfield said data companies will relentlessly pursue a target's personal information. "They will impersonate and use everything available that they have to convince the person who has the information to share it with them, and it's shocking how successful they are," Whitfield said. "They can basically obtain any information about anybody on any subject."