The point is that the government has not been empowered to monitor all electronic conversations, even when argued as "it's just everyone's metadata". Such monitoring is not natural common knowledge (of the "hey, anybody walking down the street could see you were talking to Joe" variety) and required an objective active threatening intrusion (of the "let us install a secret massive data tap in your communications hub, or we'll crush your business and throw you personally in jail" variety). The wording in the Constitution constituting a "right to privacy" was written by authors understandably ignorant of how incredible technologies centuries hence could/would be abused; had they foreseen such abuses, they would have tweaked the wording a small but critical amount to better specify granted powers and clarify the limitations thereon.
To wit: if Jefferson, Hancock et al knew how extensive & pervasive surveillance would be, they'd have made sure the powers granted to government would NOT have included such wholesale monitoring, and would have clarified it with refinements to the 4th Amendment wording.
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The point is that the government has not been empowered to monitor all electronic conversations, even when argued as "it's just everyone's metadata". Such monitoring is not natural common knowledge (of the "hey, anybody walking down the street could see you were talking to Joe" variety) and required an objective active threatening intrusion (of the "let us install a secret massive data tap in your communications hub, or we'll crush your business and throw you personally in jail" variety). The wording in the Constitution constituting a "right to privacy" was written by authors understandably ignorant of how incredible technologies centuries hence could/would be abused; had they foreseen such abuses, they would have tweaked the wording a small but critical amount to better specify granted powers and clarify the limitations thereon.
To wit: if Jefferson, Hancock et al knew how extensive & pervasive surveillance would be, they'd have made sure the powers granted to government would NOT have included such wholesale monitoring, and would have clarified it with refinements to the 4th Amendment wording.