This "never before seen" argument cuts both ways, though. There has also never been a full, verbatim record of all of one's communications, personal notes, sear

This "never before seen" argument cuts both ways, though. There has also never been a full, verbatim record of all of one's communications, personal notes, searches of the equivalent of the world's largest encyclopedia, precise location over time, and myriad other details, carried in one's pocket and/or magically copied to a central location at which someone can perform instantaneous bulk keyword searches. The raw data and processing power over that data that governments have, now, is completely unprecedented in the history of the world. We used to be protected by the ephemeral nature of 99% of life and by the inability for anyone to centrally view or mechanically process the other 1% (letters, diaries, etc). This is just as much argument for strong protection as your argument goes against strong protection.