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police driving up and down the streets of neighborhoods scanning each house with sophisticated equipment that can detect all sorts of illegal drugs, weapons, chemicals, and other such things anywhere in the house

Gent, you frame the basic question question quite well:

Is the 4th Amendment really sufficient to protect the privacy we all actually want?

Forget about nice doggies for a minnit. Fast forward to your scenario.

Let's say you can do it by satellite/computer. Every morning a desk cop gets an automated report on suspicious activity, and he grabs his coffee and walks over to get bench warrants based on that probable cause.

How will we be able to use the 4th Amendment for protection then?

It seems like sniffing dogs or super-spy technology, the 4th Amendment is actually broken in many ways before we begin. Seriously, couldn't it be written better to protect the privacy we all actually desire in this invasive technological society?

How would the 4th Amendment be written to effectively allow for the initiation of the collection of evidence for a warrant without being open to misuse?

Seriously, couldn't it be written better to protect the privacy we all actually desire in this invasive technological society?

I don't think it necessarily needs to be written better, but understood better. The basic sum and substance of it is that government can't do to citizens' persons and property what citizens aren't allowed to do to each other's persons and property, unless they get a warrant (which can only be issued under certain specified conditions). So every warrantless action by government agencies that's remotely suggestive of a search has to be examined as though it were merely one citizen doing it to another, and asking if it would be legal.

"couldn't [the Fourth Amendment] be written better to protect the privacy we all actually desire in this invasive technological society?"

I don't fault the founding fathers for not looking ahead to the technological marvels/horrors that would be constructed in this day and age. I think the 4th Amendment is in great shape - it just needs to be clarified. We've had a long list of precedent defining plain view searches and probable cause searches as reasonable. I'm fine with both of those, and I think just about everyone else is too. If a cop hears someone crying out for help in my house, I certainly expect them to bust down my door and get in there ASAP.

What we need to distinguish, in my opinion, is plain view from not plain view. If a satellite system can use gamma rays to map out every square inch of your house, then plain view takes on a whole new meaning. I would suggest a law - not an Amendment - which defines plain view as what a human being can detect with his or her senses. If you can see it, smell it, or hear it coming from the property, then it's fair game. Otherwise, no matter how super duper wonderful your scanning equipment may be, it requires a warrant to use it.

If the police have a legal warrant to search my house, then by all means, map every square inch of it with a satellite. I find that to be better than having cops tearing through the house, and I have no problem with it so long as there's a warrant behind it.

Want to know where things get worse? We're already looking at ways to read human brain patterns to discern general thoughts and feelings. Now what happens when the technology reaches a point where we can read the human brain and search its memory from a distance? :-)