[osth]

That's a little scary. I would have figured smart programmers would know these things.

Most of the case law that has shaped this area of jurisprudence involves obvious criminals, mainly those who would be prosecuted for illegal drug possession. One could read all those cases, say, while in law school, and think "Why do we need to be so careful to observe the protections of 4th Amendment? Aren't we just protecting drug dealers and other criminals? Aren't we just making the job of the police more difficult?" But one could also conclude that it is the Constitutional principles we are exercising such caution to protect, not the obvious criminals who sometimes might escape prosecution as a result of forcing police to "follow the rules".

In the context of modern telephone and internet surveillence (which in the coming decade or two will become one in the same, when AT&T is fully transitioned to TCP/IP), one might reason that there's little need to observe the 4th Amendment as it only protects criminals, would-be criminals or citizens with "something to hide". The net is widening.

Instead of the undesirable side effect of having guilty parties (e.g. drug dealers) get away because of the hassle to police of following the rules so as not to collect inadmissible evidence, it seems like we are headed for a different sort of undesired side effect. When all evidence is by default "lawfully" collected (because it's so easy to collect it and people have over time assented to this by failing to object to it): innocent parties are likely to get swept up in what will become a massive dragnet.