Actually, the telecoms never broke the law. They may freely give the Government, or anyone else, any information about you they want. The Privacy Act does not apply. In fact, as long as they can claim they did not profit from the information they gave the FBI/Homeland Security, they are completely immune.
I reference the case where consumers attempted to sue Jet Blue for giving away their information (including Social Security numbers, addresses, telephone numbers, demographics like number of children, race, etc) to the FBI. The judge ruled that yes, Jet Blue did give away personal information without permission, however, there was no law forbidding Jet Blue from freely giving away that information. And, since the Federal Government did not take that information by force (they politely asked for it) they did NOT need a warrant to get the information.
So giving the Telecoms protection for giving away information for free (the same info they probably sell to private companies and individuals btw) is just stopping frivolous lawsuits and stop the waste of federal money through wasted time and expense for a case that cannot be won, due to precedent being set with the Jet Blue Case.
Remember, the Privacy Act does not apply to everything. Only very specific industries in very specific circumstances with very specific information. Everything else can be handed out like candy. Furthermore, no where in the Constitution does it state that citizens have a right to privacy. It’s implied, but not enforced nor expressly written. You have a right to protection against illegal search and seizure, but you were not illegally searched, you gave the telecoms this information freely, and it was not seized, the telecoms gave it away.
