Comment by pjungwir

Aristotle advised that laws should cover the general case and judges the particular. Hence the saying, "Hard cases make bad law." There is always a need to interpret. So the computerization of guilt or even "fishing" is very scary. Privacy is a buffer that helps build "selective enforcement" into any law that gets made.

We know that in the civil sphere getting sued is so bad it often doesn't matter whether you win or lose: the mere threat is enough to compel or punish. Likewise in the criminal sphere, people often settle rather than fight, which would mean bankruptcy and the risk of worse jail time. Now imagine in the criminal sphere if a computer could look at everything you wrote and raise a flag every time something looked suspicious. It's important to have a buffer, some kind of resistance that must be overcome before subjecting people to that. Hence the Fourth Amendment.