[mpyne]

4th Amendment prohibits unreasonable searches of persons, houses, papers, and effects.

It has never prohibited the government from doing other searches, otherwise government agencies would not be able to subpoena business records about you from third parties.

Sometimes Congress passes separate laws adding a specific requirement to obtain a warrant before doing a certain type of search, and the Supreme Court has also acted to expand 4th Amendment protections to include 'reasonable expectation of privacy' (concerning a phone booth conversation in an otherwise public place) but even in that case the Supreme Court specifically abrogated the concept of a general "right to privacy".

[george88b]

Wouldn't an average, reasonable person in today's age consider an email or digital file to be a modern version of a "paper" or a cell phone to be a modern "effect"?

[mpyne]

Well that already is that the case, but that would only prevent the government from searching the cell phone or computer itself (which is why you don't hear of NSA hacking into Americans' computers), not from intercepting communications made by the cell phone or computer once it leaves the home.

[anaphor]

Can the NSA open everyone's mail, make a copy of it, and put the original letters back without that being "collection" of the letters?

[mpyne]

Well it would be the USPS, not the NSA, and the USPS does indeed scan today every single mail item they process for "metadata" about the contents of the envelope [1] (note how the linked article reinforces my point about Fourth Amendment protection).

Either way if the failure of the Fourth Amendment to be protective enough is that bad then the solution is either to pass a law adding the needed protection (what Congress did for landline wiretaps) or to wait for an activist judge to quote James Madison in a ruling that expands the permit of the Fourth Amendment (e.g. the ruling today).

But simply wishing that the Fourth Amendment says something other than what it does, doesn't turn the Fourth Amendment into what you wish.

[1] http://gizmodo.com/5994922/how-the-post-office-sniffs-out-an...