The 4th amendment only applies to the government, and has only ever applied to actual tangible property. This is being in public where there is no expectation of privacy.
Eh, the case law here is less clear, principally because automated surveillance at this scale has never been possible before. But its also unclear because this is a tricky zone for the (mentioned elsewhere) "State Actor Doctrine". Since there are legitimate, non-government uses of e.g. license plate tracking, that means the product and service is not, obviously, a state actor. So should the 14th amendment cover it? My gut feeling is "yes", but case law doesn't (yet) reflect that.
Did the founding fathers anticipate a situation where everyone, everywhere, in public, was being surveilled, ceaselessly, in a fashion that allowed automated tools to pick out individuals, but at basically zero cost?
"No reasonable expectation of privacy" presupposes that the potential invaders of said privacy are actual living human beings, who have to be paid for their time, and thus have to sleep, eat, excrete, blink, etc. They cannot be on the job 100% of the time without incurring considerable cost. Previously, perfectly tailing someone 100% of the time was reserved for the most valuable of targets. Now it can be affordably used on somebody with overdue parking tickets. Or whomever the summer intern at one of these shops decides is cute and has an easy-to-remember license plate.
The fourth amendment, of course, also applies to private actors when they become essentially agents of the state, by taking in a role traditionally within the purview of the state, so long as the state knows of the activity, more or less. If you would like a more accurate definition, you can search for “state actor doctrine” and you will find some cases about railroads drug testing employees and parcel carriers searching packages for contraband.
"In the private sector everything is allowed, except those that are explicitly prohibited.
In the public sector everything is prohibited, except those that are explicitly allowed."
This is why in the EU (which is not a perfect society, but 'good enough'/'better than others' we got GDPR and EUDPR which cannot and should not be ignored.
If you allow the public sector to go rogue, then freedoms and right will be corroded and eventually taken away 'for our sake'.
Well the 4th amendment does not mention a limitation to the government. It says "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated" it says nothing about limitation to government actors.
It does go on to talk about Warrants which are government instruments, and I agree that taking pictures of licence plates on public roads would not be a violation anyway.
But you can't argue that because I'm a private person, or that because TransUnion is not the government, that it's legal for us to go searching through peoples houses or papers or effects.
Did the founding fathers anticipate a situation where everyone, everywhere, in public, was being surveilled, ceaselessly, in a fashion that allowed automated tools to pick out individuals, but at basically zero cost?
"No reasonable expectation of privacy" presupposes that the potential invaders of said privacy are actual living human beings, who have to be paid for their time, and thus have to sleep, eat, excrete, blink, etc. They cannot be on the job 100% of the time without incurring considerable cost. Previously, perfectly tailing someone 100% of the time was reserved for the most valuable of targets. Now it can be affordably used on somebody with overdue parking tickets. Or whomever the summer intern at one of these shops decides is cute and has an easy-to-remember license plate.