When the United States Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson was asked, "do you believe the government has the right to bulk collection of records from millions of individuals without a warrant", his response was that the question was "beyond my competence as secretary of homeland security" to answer.
The original article touches on some important details and raises key criticisms of the slipshod method currently used to obtain communications records for millions of people from US phone companies in violation of the spirit, if not letter, of the US Constitution's Fourth Amendment prohibition on unreasonable government searches and seizures.
Source video for quotes and context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_auHdE89qQ
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 06 2015, @11:53AM
But it is his job to follow the rules! I think we have a powerful and recent affirmation that just following orders is not enough:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Befehl_ist_Befehl [wikipedia.org]