[StanislavPetrov]

>Given the choice, I’ll take the lesser of two evils which is a company that is interested in knowing the things I buy and where I go, for the express purpose of selling better ads.

The choice is the crux of it. I'm not on Facebook, I choose not to have a "smartphone", I don't use free email or other web services that harvest my information and I avoid a variety of other activities that may offer every day conveniences at the sacrifice of my privacy to various corporations. I don't have this choice when it comes to the government.

We can debate exactly where the 4th amendment applies to prevent the government from hoovering up all our data so that they can track us all individually, in real time, and monitor all of our communications and interactions - but nobody can reasonably argue that the 4th amendment doesn't kick in at some point to prohibit this. Its always harder to claw back power the government has claimed than to stop them from claiming new ones. Its also the reason we need more transparency, so that we know exactly what information the government is harvesting and how closely we are being monitored and tracked.