I don't see how you can talk about "inspection" without some sort of intentionality, which the machines don't have. Digital systems in particular transport cop

I don't see how you can talk about "inspection" without some sort of intentionality, which the machines don't have. Digital systems in particular transport copies of bits, and the process by which the copies are made is "inspection" as surely as anything else is; the useful function of the system depends on correct interpretation of the payload bits as much as it does on any of the other bits. It is your revision from "exposure" to "inspection" that I feel is hair-splitting. It's not even a distinction without a difference. It's a distinction applied to a machine but based on human assumptions about intent. It's anthropomorphizing. I don't buy the legal justification for the collection of metadata that you describe, and I think that a really honest, thorough application of that line of reasoning would lead us to conclude that no electronically assisted communications have "an expectation of privacy." I guess that's where we find ourselves, though.