Greenwald, Glenn. “Legal issues governing the Administration's newly disclosed surveillance program.” Unclaimed territory, May 11, 2006.

Summary: The National Security Agency secretly asked all the major telecommunications companies to turn over their records of telephone calls placed or received by millions of Americans since 2001 -- records that include the originator, recipient, and duration of each call. Most of the companies complied with the NSA's request, even though it was, in several ways, illegal for the NSA to make that request and also illegal in several ways for the telecommunications companies to comply with it.

My own view is that the NSA's request is also a patent violation of Amendment IV to the Constitution of the United States. (However, most authorities on Constitutional law say that, since a 1979 Supreme Court decision, Americans have had no legitimate expectation of privacy when they voluntarily allow third parties to keep records about them. The majority decision was written by Justice Blackmun, with Chief Justice Burger and Justices White, Rehnquist, and Stevens joining the opinion and Justices Stewart, Marshall, and Brennan dissenting.)