Beckstcw1 comments on Why hasn't anyone brought up the fact that the NSA is literally spying on and building profiles of everyone's children?:
Cops have reason to believe that a wanted criminal is using a city park to conduct meetings with associates (Let's call it "Verizon Park"). So the stakeout the park and take (collect) photos (metadata) of every person who enters or leave the park (makes a phone call) during a specified time frame they believe the criminal will be active, and cross reference the photos (phone numbers, durations, and times) with a database to see if that criminal or any of his known associates are active (talking on the phone) in the park in that timeframe, as well as taking photos of him and everyone he talks to (talks to) while he's there.
To me, having the photos of everyone who was in the park during that time period is not in any way a violation of any 4th Amendment rights. What would be a violation would be if they stopped and searched (collected and analyzed/listened to the content of the phone calls) everyone who came to the park, simply because they were in the park, something which isn't actually happening according to the documents Snowden has leaked.