Americans have rights to keep their communications secret. The Fourth Amendment protects Americans from "unreasonable searches and seizures" ("Bill of Right" am.4). As a result, a police officer or a government agency must acquire permission from a judge if he or she searches the private property or arrests someone. In order to get the warrant, he or she must have the "probable cause". The National Security Agency's surveillance of millions of Americans' telephone calls has caused a debate about the constitutionality of their actions.
The NSA collected different types of information. The first is "a record of most calls made in the U.S." (Stray par.2). AT&T and Sprint confirmed that they gave the NSA the metadata of telephone calls. The metadata includes "telephone numbers of the phone making and receiving the call, and how long the call lasted" (Stray par.2). This is about several billion calls per day. The second is "Email, Facebook posts and instant messages for an unknown number of people" (Stray par.3). Facebook reveals that "the private data of between 18,000 and 19,000 users" was given to the NSA and FBI in 2012 (Stray part.3). The third is "the raw Internet traffic" (Stray par.4). The NSA's experts can see internet activities such as searching information, files sent, online purchases, or addresses typed into Google Maps, etc., by using the special software. Almost all information is private information, which can be a factor to prove whether or not the NSA violated the Americans' right.
One side believes that the NSA's actions violate the Constitution because of two reasons. The first is that the NSA recorded phone calls without a warrant from a federal judge, and did not show possible reasons, or individualized doubts. The NSA's actions broke the rule.