You don't understand the 4th Amendment. Spying on the activity of a person is not conducting a search of their home. But your statement does open up an interesting subject. Even if they monitor cell phone activity, that is not an illegal wire tap. Wire taps pertain to the monitoring of hard wired telephone lines inside people's homes. If you are using a cell phone outside of your home, you can be monitored without a court order. The FBI puts Stingrays and similar devices known as dirtboxes in cars and small airplanes as a way to quickly dragnet data from a large number of devices while it is hunting for a device that belongs to a suspect. I think they get completely around the court order thing by saving your phone conversation in text. That way, no one actually listens to any conversation. Machines just convert voice into text and stores that text in huge data banks.
I’d say government doesn’t understand the 4th amendment...
Though many times it can be.
If it's as good as the CC on my TV; ANY shyster lawyer could get THAT evidence tossed!
The 4th Amendment was to keep people secure in their person, papers, and effects (property), so such things could not be searched without some probable cause that a crime was being committed. [Just think how disruptive it would be to a business to have someone digging through your stuff on an ongoing basis, not to mention the advantage which other businesses could take of insider knowledge.]
Communications methods have changed.
What I post on this forum, or someone puts on facebook or a similar forum is the equivalent of tacking up a handbill in the public square. It isn't secure, isn't supposed to be, really, and there is no expectation of privacy.
If I specifically call someone or send them a text message, however, those have taken the place of that physical letter or messenger. Those communications are not intended to be in the public domain. As such, those communications not posted in the public domain should be considered private and left that way.
That a machine which is subject to error in translating speech to text, which cannot translate the inflections of sarcasm, joking, or dead seriousness is is doing the monitoring is even more dangerous than a live eavesdropper who might be more honest or precise about the nature of that communication.
Should we have to parse our speech, even in private, so it cannot be misinterpreted by the machine and our lives threatened or forfeit due to mistranslation of communications which should have been private in the first place?
The machine's interpretation of what communication has transpired will, in turn, be translated again by suspicious people (that's their job) who are looking for a reason to continue with a physical search. It's what they do.
For the uninitiated, the physical search may involve seizing all computers and electronic devices and data storage devices, destroying furniture believed to have a hidden compartment, tearing out walls, and, at the discretion of the person doing the searching, generally trashing the premises. The searchers are under no obligation to return anything to its former position nor clean up any mess. If you provide any resistance, especially to a no-knock search, that opens another kettle of worms.
It is difficult to 'violate' the Fourth Amendment by means not in existence at the time it was written, against means of communication and information storage not in existence, but the intent of the Amendment should encompass the technologies which have replaced letters and papers, just as the concept of "intellectual property" has been extended to property which was once a mere physical device.
No such abuse should be tolerated by ANY government, and claiming it is 'because they are on our side' is no excuse for crossing that threshold. I will note that in times of war we have reason, if we are honest, to suspect people or groups of people of engaging in espionage and have traditionally monitored such groups and other specific individuals. Even then, our government did not monitor everyone.