[geofft]

To play devil's advocate for a bit, let's assume an America where the government never abuses its power and there are no criminals other than two terrorist cells, one in New York and one in DC, and neither of those cells knows how to make bombs because America has education and nobody else does.

Both of these cells go to the public library and check out books on bombmaking and other mischief. They also ask the librarian, "Hey, have you had any requests for records under the PATRIOT ACT?" If they ever hear a "yes", no matter whether it's them or not, that cell shuts down and moves to another city, and the other cell continues its plot.

Leaking even the one bit of knowledge of whether there was a request for anyone would make the investigation harder, and would allow the terrorists to escape and plot the destruction of our freedom elsewhere.

Now, in the real America, the value of that one bit to an evildoer, when applied to an organization Apple's size, as opposed to the value of that one bit to measure PATRIOT ACT activity as part of government accountability, is a good question to ask.

[ENGNR]

The balance then is specific subpoenias for individuals authorised by a judge, with the individuals being informed after a reasonable period (say 9 months) which information was subpoenaed.

The library could potentially even give anonymised information that might give reasonable suspicion, eg let us know when someone rents these books together and we'll go get a warrant.

The sad thing is that the west currently has exactly this balance in place, but by pushing too hard everything is going to go underground or overseas. We're losing the exact capabilities we need to fight bad actors, thanks to the NSA's greed and short sightedness.