I find it very hard to argue that there is a reasonable expectation of privacy (business records exceptions notwithstanding) in a public Twitter or Facebook fee

I find it very hard to argue that there is a reasonable expectation of privacy (business records exceptions notwithstanding) in a public Twitter or Facebook feed. You could possibly allow for it in tightly restricted Twitter or Facebook feeds where a small number of users are allowed access, such as Close Friends in the case of Facebook. Sometimes getting the public to accept a particular argument is not the hard part, it's laying out the alternatives factually in a way that shows the public how they contrast. I find it very difficult to argue positions that take extremes of the type you laid out. I would also agree that vague notions are a waste of time. Even with the revelations in 2004 and '05, it was clear that the focus of the program was traffic analysis by completely automated means, and we should have been willing to legislate the extent to which we will allow that activity in public laws in the public domain. The role of the FISC should be to allow for warrants in very uncommon cases of foreign espionage or international terrorism, not as a general mechanism to allow the presentation and consideration of secret evidence. And it doesn't end with that court, the state secret privilege has been used commonly and repeatedly (see the work of Steven Aftergood for more details) to quash cases that the government considers inconvenient, and the Congress has essentially wiped away the complicity of common carriers in violating their implied assurance of the privacy of voice communication. The President called, after these revelations, but nonetheless, for a renewed and expanded debate of these tradeoffs. Do we consider this over now that the broadcast and print media (of all political stripes) have left it alone? Have we now decided that the American people have accepted this as the new normal and moved on? At every opportunity we conflate the mostly benign traffic analysis and ignore the very real threat (by those we call government) of a persistent and permanent archive of all of our most private conversations. These tools in the wrong hands would be devastating to any free people, placing so many of us in deadly danger of a government that may take our past words as proof of our treason. This is not theory, this is history. (The traffic analysis would also contribute to the ends of such a government, where guilt by association may be sufficient for punishment.)