“Your contention about data mining being contrary to the 4th Amendment is questionable and debatable.
How does blind crunching of data violate search and seizure?”
If the government needs a warrant to inspect my mail or “crunch” my phone records, then they need a warrant for this too. I don’t see how that is debatable. If the government thought they needed no additional authority to do this, then they could have done it openly, rather than secretly. Instead, they hid the program, because they knew full well the repercussions of a public revelation.
“As far as data mining, we’ve known the government is doing that for years.”
Sorry, but you are just wrong on this point. I think you are confusing data mining with other types of surveillance programs that are similar, but not the same. The government data mining is a brand new revelation that at best was only speculated on prior to Snowden, and never confirmed.
No.
Do you know what cluster analysis is?
Data mining of our phone records has been going on for years.
I don’t know what you mean by crunch phone records. That would seem to be close to analogous.
Reading mail is not analogous to blind data mining of phone call records. That would be analogous to listening to phone conversations. That would require a warrant.
In blind data mining, what is searched or seized that relates to any individual specifically?
What does your contract with the phone provider say? No one is forced to use their service.
Only a fool would not be able to understand the difference, and only an enemy agent would support this thing in light of everything else that has come out recently about the government using the IRS to target individuals that disagree with them. The government has proved it cannot be trusted to do the right thing and act within the law. Anyone supporting them in these efforts, are themselves traitors.