> The 4th amendment was not instantiated so it could be interpreted at will by whomever is currently in power. It has to be interpreted to be applied in any ev

> The 4th amendment was not instantiated so it could be interpreted at will by whomever is currently in power. It has to be interpreted to be applied in any event. That's why rayiner mentioned 'narrow scope' in his hypothetical. In this actual case it's not that Gen. Alexander decided the 4th Amendment doesn't apply, it's that Gen. Alexander managed to get a lot more people than himself, in all 3 branches of government, to agree that legal precedent would make systems such as being used at the NSA legal. Now we can argue that something simply being legal isn't actually carte blanche to go do it (e.g. rayiner has said as much in a different topic, that the law isn't meant to withstand everyone to try to push its boundaries all at once). But we can also argue that someone with a task T should take advantage of every available tool at their disposal to finish that task. This is the tack taken by those who say that Google/Facebook/etc. have no culpability for not paying more taxes, as long as they avoid doing so by legal means. Personally, I'm of the opinion that this WaPo piece is actually more concerning than news of PRISM, data collection, etc. I assume the NSA is collecting data, but I assume also that senior NSA leaders would be aware of why we do not concentrate power in the hands of individuals, and why we do not try to 'merge swimlanes' of functions.