move. who should have access to that data? what about law enforcement? should it require a warrant? sure, it s about the changing scope of the fourth amendment in a digital age but a case before the supreme court tomorrow could go far to change privacy expectations for all of us whose smart phone is like a third hand. nbc s justice correspondent pete williams joins me now with more on that. and danny cevellao, msnbc legal analyst, is also here. pete, walk us through how we got here. what was the impetus of the case? it was the fbi gathering cell phone data to try to solve a string of burglaries in the detroit area, people stealing cell phones ironically from radio shack and t mobile. the fact is when you use your cell phone, this is not about data stored in the phone, this is about data stored by the phone company. but every time you use your phone, as you move around, it connects to a different cell tower, and the phone company keeps records.
on, that this is going to be a disaster for republicans? they can t get their act together. no. no. look, i think at the end of the day we re the progoing to party, the party of upward mobile and. these are new issues we re facing for the first time. terrorists didn t use cell phones 25 years ago. this is a new issue and it s difficult sometimes to balance the privacy expectations of americans with the reality that the federal government has a very significant obligation to provide for security. and so i think this is an important debate to health people bring strong feelings. i don t think we only have two choices. protecting americans from those who choose to harm them and protecting the privacy receive americans. john mccain sings your praises and said if he had a choice between rand paul and hillary clinton, he would have to think about it.
in our name, the expansion of our defense budget, expansion of national security state and the changes in our privacy expectations that you would have expected, i think, in a less politically polarized environment. frankly, i think this has been good for the fact that the nsa is saying, okay, we are going to declassify some of the things that absolutely should not have been classified. as long as we re still spending 20 minutes having a conversation about this, i think we are better off than we had been before these leaks. the other thing, michael, is in some ways wikileaks has been a convenient foil for the u.s. government in all of this. the prosecutors said they would have pursued the same case had manning leaked to the new york times. as far as we know, bradley manning said he tried to leak to the new york times and washington post before he gave it to wikileaks. he didn t come to mother jones. unfortunately not. if he had come to mother jones, if he had gone to the new
marco rubio, who, like those other two gentlemen, is often mentioned as a potential presidential candidate himself. so, senator, i quickly inserted you in thissing this little fight. what do you make of it? much ado about nothing or does the party have a problem? it s an interesting dynamic that s playing out and i ll let them figure that out. it s an important debate. the answer to the question is, we have to do both. we have to protect not just privacy rights but privacy expectations and i understand we have a government that is targeting people, irs is targeting americans. of course americans are concerned how the government is going to use information it has about them. but we know these programs are essential and important because they have been able to thwart attackness the past. so it s a very significant issue. how do we prevent terrorist attacks in the future? we know that terrorist use