[lesuorac]

Those examples are still different from reality.

You're decided to add a condition of "held by the post office" to the letter example. This is not at all what I wrote. Once the letter is delivered (as it was in my example) that recipient may give it to the Government without a warrant. The government may just not forcibly take it without a warrant.

Again, NSA isn't going into your digital home. They're going into Verizon's digital home and Verizon has invited them in there. Sure Verizon has information there that you gave them but just like if it had written Verizon physical letters it's not _your_ home its _Verizon's_ home.

It's fine to think of this like a loophole but gathering information and selling it really isn't some novelty that didn't exist in the 1700s.