I don't think the government can really sort out the many billions of SMS messages for passages that might have destabilizing political content, though it might be easier to catch discussion about, say, drug trafficking or other blatantly criminal activity. But registering people would have a chilling effect, in that people would know they could potentially be linked to illegal messages and activities. |
They could have refused to give it. Certainly, Yahoo could have said, 'this is private information, we're not going to release it'. |