Thought-provoking stuff.. While the intent of the fourth amendment is obvious and noble, I wonder whether, given the accelerating pace of creation and processin

Thought-provoking stuff.. While the intent of the fourth amendment is obvious and noble, I wonder whether, given the accelerating pace of creation and processing of information, it still makes sense to rely on legislation to prevent privacy violations. How can there be any hope of enforcing such laws in the face of the increasing complexity of worldwide communications, where (as one of the commenters on the article points out) the routing of any given data is nondeterministic and temporary copies are made at every step? It seems to me that the law is hopelessly on the wrong side of technological evolution here (I would make a very similar argument regarding copyright law). Looking at it from a different angle, perhaps (note a hint of devil's advocate here) we should be glad that modern cryptographic systems (enabled by the very tech that seemed to threaten privacy) offer the potential to make old-fashioned laws superfluous?