I won't say somebody is an idiot, but I agree that the government can get any information it wants now without any checks and balances, thanks to the Patriot Act. http://www.bordc.org/resources/businessbook.pdf This particular PDF talks about the cost of doing business with the Patriot Act. If somethink like the Carrier IQ program that tracks everything you do with your phone can be inbedded into phones operating system, what is to stop something like that from being inbedded into all major operating systems of all devices and being accessed by the government. Answer. Nothing.

Carrier IQ is a program supposedly used for diagnostic purposes. It is imbedded in the software of android phones. It tracks everything including key strokes. Now here is a fun blurb from CarrierIQ dot coms website from their whitepaper section. Carrier IQ takes consumer privacy very seriously. Anonymization and consumer choice through opt-out are important and included capabilities of Carrier IQ systems. Services are delivered to network operators through an encrypted environment. Carrier IQ acts as a service provider to network operators and device manufacturers, and makes no independent use of data from Carrier IQ enabled mobile device. But is this the truth? Assuming Carrier IQ is not a front for a US government agency. (get paranoid people, LOL) what would stop the government from issuing a court order under the US patriot act section 215 to access all that information?

I read in many comments that the everybody's thought process is the government might send an order to a company that says we need this information from you. Everybody believes the company could then seek legal council to fight an order if they think it's unjust or not in their best interest. I believe this is an incorrect assumption. I also believe they are sending along a gag order as well. The gag order is, you can not discuss the information we want and the request for information we want with any other party. This gag order language is part of section 215 the patriot act. Those served with Section 215 orders are prohibited from disclosing the fact to anyone else. This was supposedly removed in 2006 with the reauthorization of the patriot act to allow for legal counsel in certain circumstances. (But the government does not have to tell the recipient of the order, they have that right.) This means most companies would not seek out legal counsel, because they believe they would be violating a gag order. But there is another caveat. The court orders are issued by a secret court using secret evidence. Since the court is secret, if the company wants to contest, they cannot because the secrecy of the court could override the rule of law if the secret court deems it so. Nor can you contest any "secret" evidence. The order is unstoppable.