I renew my question of why this is surprising or objectionable. "Pen register" surveillance has been a thing that applies to actual mail, email, telephone networks, IP networks, and any other thing with a real or metaphorical envelope.
It's surprising because the government doesn't exactly talk about it a lot. Thus, most people who don't follow security issues don't hear about it very often. It's not like the government advertises these activities with billboards and TV spots. The reason they don't is because this broad interpretation of their responsibilities makes them look pretty bad without having a long discussion with a lot of context. As it is, people might just ask them to stop reading their emails. So, if the people doing it don't talk about it, why would you be surprised that other people don't know it's happening? It sounds like you're saying "I'm surprised that not everybody pays careful attention to the specific domains I pay attention to", but remember that it takes all kinds of people to make the world go round.
Is it warranted (figuratively, not literally) in this instance? Perhaps. But nonetheless, it re-opens the conversation about the wider implications about warrantless searches.
Right, but!
That's what the conversation would be about, without a long discussion and a lot of context. That's why we don't have the conversation: it's too hard, and people would just say "stop listening to my phone calls, you government perverts". And because we don't have that conversation, it's a surprise when things like this come up.
They might not talk about it but one agency or another has been consuming all digital traffic since at least the late 90s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivore_%28software%29?wprov...
Stasi was limited by that the whole of DDR can't work at Stasi.
Instead of the government joining in on the fun, maybe it would be good to e.g. close down Google (split up the spy and search parts, which essentially is closing down Google since they have relatively nothing without the spying).
Tangentially, J. Edgar Hoover was politically opposed to feminism, and COINTELPRO had a massive secret police action against feminists and feminist groups in the 1970s. Some of us want these issues hashed out at the ballot box, not by some giant secret political police force.
SMH
Study history.
The US Gov kept a record of all the metadata of every letter sent through the USPS?
> Since 2001, the Postal Service has been effectively conducting mail covers on all American postal mail as part of the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program.[1]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_Isolation_Control_and_T...