Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Since when were private companies part of the Judicial Branch? What part of GP's quote from the article gets you to "private companies are part of the judicial branch"? The judicial branch wasn't involved there, only the executive. All of us, private individuals or organizations, have the right to challenge any requests by the executive branch (and by the same token, unless forbidden by law we can also just volunta…
I get what you're saying, but "the company reviews each request for data it gets to ensure it is legal" just sounds like something a judge should do, no?
No, unless you're arguing that the government should be barred from even making voluntary requests at all? I'm not sure I'd agree with that either though, there's plenty of times where a government request really is just an honest "request" for pure info, like a poll or survey or something on how a program is working and any feedback participants want to give. Though of course it's also easy to see how things like 3rd party doctrine have expanded in effect over time and gotten badly abused, particularly in combination with other levers government has. Perhaps that doctrine should be abolished and the government shouldn't be able to make "voluntary requests" for anything that'd touch on a criminal or civil investigation (so they'd still be able to ask for surveys and the like), but that'd require some careful consideration. Or maybe there are some reasonable limits in terms of data automatically and unavoidably collected (like cellular location) vs data voluntarily shared.
Regardless however, if the government wants to compel somebody to comply, well that's literally what a warrant (or court order) is for right? If the government chooses not to involve a judge in a request for data that'd require a warrant to force, then yeah of course the private party they're asking gets to decide whether to voluntarily go along with that or not. That's the trade.