That's certainly not a bright line in any American jurisdiction. Courts can and do order the production of library loan records. In general an American court can order the disclosure of any record maintained anywhere by anyone for any purpose. There are no records that are private and privileged against a court order, with a few narrow exceptions. The police can't order someone to produce anything; they need a court order to do it.
No, American courts can order the production of any kind of records, and always have done so. Law enforcement goes to the court, shows "probable cause" regarding a current case, swears to the facts of the case, and the court orders some third party to produce the information. The third party is obligated to comply or contest. This is the legal process to which people are due in the phrase "due process of law".
The Section 215 powers you refer to move jurisdiction of certain matters from one court to another. That's perhaps not great but the main effect of it is giving law enforcement a more secret venue in which to seek warrants.
Also note that this legal theory only comes into play if they're compelled to do so. The police and investigators can always just kindly ask for records to be produced without a warrant and it's up to the institution to honor that request or not, much like how Google does its own review of law enforcement data requests in absence of a warrant.
It seems you are right. And other countries have long done similar or worse.
I always thought that in the west you had a freedom of thought and could pursue whatever direction of research you wished without consequence. After all, without freedom of thought, you can't really have proper freedom of conscience, let alone freedom of speech.
I'm slightly disturbed that apparently it's not quite that simple. Today I'm one of the (un)lucky 10000 I guess. https://xkcd.com/1053/
Jeffbee is right, but I would also point out the number of hurdles identified. Before the patriot act there were 100% violations of personal liberty and restrictions on consumption of information but there were more hurdles.
The point of the post here isn't that Google is providing records (which they have always if the situation has been identified as appropriate by a judge + public safety + ....) but that they are providing a really high level, in no way targeted or restricted request for records
Yes but again, please don't conflate these two unrelated topics. Bork's video rental records were voluntarily disclosed by a video rental shop to a newspaper reporter. A person has no particular constitutional right to privacy in such matters. This was Bork's own opinion on the matter! Later, Congress passed a law making such records private.
But that's all neither here nor there. We're discussing a court order. No law prevents a court from ordering the disclosure of video rental records, even today with the Video Privacy Protection Act, because the VPPA allows disclosure "to a law enforcement agency pursuant to a warrant issued under the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure". Because that's what courts do. There's really nothing that is protected from court orders in the US, except for a few well-known, very narrow exemptions.
