<P> However federal judge William H. Pauley III in New York City ruled the U.S. government's global telephone data - gathering system is needed to thwart potential terrorist attacks, and that it can only work if everyone's calls are swept in . U.S. District Judge Pauley also ruled that Congress legally set up the program and that it does not violate anyone's constitutional rights . The judge also concluded that the telephone data being swept up by NSA did not belong to telephone users, but to the telephone companies . He further ruled that when NSA obtains such data from the telephone companies, and then probes into it to find links between callers and potential terrorists, this further use of the data was not even a search under the Fourth Amendment . He also concluded that the controlling precedent is Smith v. Maryland: "Smith's bedrock holding is that an individual has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information provided to third parties," Judge Pauley wrote . The American Civil Liberties Union declared on January 2, 2012 that it will appeal Judge Pauley's ruling that NSA bulk phone record collection is legal . "The government has a legitimate interest in tracking the associations of suspected terrorists, but tracking those associations does not require the government to subject every citizen to permanent surveillance," deputy ACLU legal director Jameel Jaffer said in a statement . </P> <P> Restore the Fourth is an American nonprofit that seeks to strengthen the Fourth Amendment and end mass surveillance programs that violate it . It organized protests in 2013 and 2014, and in 2015 helped to introduce the Surveillance State Repeal Act, besides other lobbying activities . </P>

Which of the following is not an exception to the fourth amendment's search warrant requirement