If I'm a cell phone company and decide to just give the government access to all data I have pass through my systems, is that allowed? What if the government gives me some benefit in return for it?
> Lo and behold, Carpenter's general location information matched the robbery locations, and that information was used to help convict him. Carpenter appealed his conviction to the Supreme Court, contending that the Constitution required that police first obtain a warrant before getting this location information from a service provider.
This paragraph makes it seem like the govt must get a warrant before it can ask the service provider for that information.
FYI, the legal term you're looking for is "state actor". In case that helps with googling.
Source? The way I read it there doesn't seem to be any such restriction.
IIRC there weren't corporations in the modern sense when the bill of rights was written.
The Bill of Rights is a set of 10 amendments that restrict what the federal government can do with respect to citizens. The 14th amendment extends those restrictions from the federal government to include state governments as well. (Since local governments are considered extensions of the state government's jurisdiction, it's included as well).
> IIRC there weren't corporations in the modern sense when the bill of rights was written.
The Virginia Company is a corporation in the modern sense that is literally the origin of the United States. Actually, if anything, corporations have gotten less powerful since the Bill of Rights; we don't have any companies running countries any more.
The Dutch East India Company was a publicly-traded multinational corporation as early as the early 1600s.