You're the professional, but to my understanding your characterization that the amount of information yielded by a search is a 4th amendment analysis "out of th

You're the professional, but to my understanding your characterization that the amount of information yielded by a search is a 4th amendment analysis "out of thin air" isn't accurate. Alito wrote in his concurrence in Jones v. United States: Justice Alito then evaluates the GPS surveillance here, noting that “devices like the one used in the present case … make long-term monitoring relatively easy and cheap.” “[T]he best we can do in this case,” reasons Alito, “is to apply existing Fourth Amendment doctrine” and “ask whether the use of GPS tracking in a particular case involved a degree of intrusion that a reasonable person would not have anticipated.” Alito at 13. Under this inquiry, “the use of longer term GPS monitoring in investigations of most offenses impinges on expectations of privacy,” because “society’s expectation has been that law enforcement agents and others would not — and indeed, in the main, simply could not — secretly monitor and catalogue every single movement of an individual’s car for a very long period.” http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2012/01/united-states-v-jones-privacy-in-public-space-piece-it-all-together-and-you-get-5.html http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2012/01/united-st... It seems to me that Alito is saying that the amount of information gathered in Jones is relevant to 4th Amendment analysis. Specifically: "society’s expectation has been that law enforcement agents and others would not — and indeed, in the main, simply could not — secretly monitor and catalogue every single movement of an individual’s car for a very long period". Three other justices joined with Alito on this concurrence. I'm not professionally trained in this this domain, so I might be missing something. Can you reconcile Alito's concurrence with your position? Yes it was not the opinion of the Court, but surely a concurrence clears the "out-of-thin-air" bar?