Can you name one person or group whose 4th Amendment rights were directly violated by the Patriot Act?
I can think of a lot more direct and pressing violations of every one of our rights that have nothing to do with the Patriot Act and Congress has been either complicit or silent on those violations.
You are cheering a shell game being put on for your placation.
Any person whose data was obtained without a search warrant, based on probable cause, had their Fourth Amendment rights violated.
The possibility that that information could be used against them is violation enough. That's how Liberty works.
If the government wanted to include an exclusionary rule for such data collection, such that it could never be used for criminal prosecution, they could have done that, and it woiuld have alleviated some of the concern.
But they have put no such safeguard in. Why not?
So, my question to you is: can you name one person or group whose 4th Amendment rights weren't directly violated by the Patriot Act?
Totalitarianism isn't a valid solution to terrorism, or any other problem.
The blanket collection of personal data without warrant is a violation of the Fourth Amendment. Period. And I believe that even the Courts are starting to reluctantly come to that conclusion.
How many other Amendments are you willing to compromise on? All in the name of fighting the War on Terror, of course. How about the Second? The First? The Fifth?