[aznjons]

A number of initial responses to this article seem to acquiesce to the program because it scans technically "public" information. Speaking from the context of the United States, the 4th Amendment to the Constitution is what may be violated by PRISM, which protects citizens from unreasonable search and seizure. It has been interpreted by the courts that this protects citizens when they have a "reasonable expectation of privacy."

At what point with the powerful sensor technologies and analytics techniques that government agencies can employ and are mentioned in the article (semantic analysis, horizon scanning, predictive analytics, facial recognition, geolocation) do we draw a line that a reasonable expectation of privacy has been violated? I am not sure that the users of social networks who are not tech industry workers necessarily expect the extent to which extrapolations can be made and conclusions can be drawn about behavior that is technically "public" and mundane at face value.

Another separate question to consider is whether agencies will distinguish between content that is "public" or "private" in the cloud. It may be reasonable that content put in the cloud publicly is searchable, but will agencies respect cloud providers/users administrative privacy options? If I put physical property in storage I expect a warrant will be required to search it, but if I put intellectual property in the cloud, will the government respect that as protected by the 4th amendment when it is much easier to obtain, especially with the cooperation of tech companies?