Federalist No. 28

> THAT there may happen cases in which the national government may be necessitated to resort to force, cannot be denied.

Federalist No. 29

> THE power of regulating the militia, and of commanding its services in times of insurrection and invasion are natural incidents to the duties of superintending the common defense, and of watching over the internal peace of the Confederacy.

Article II then invests power over the militias, when called into service of the United States, in the President:

> The President shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States;

In other words, the Constitution put the President singularly in charge of what the framers considered the chief tool against domestic insecurity: the nationalized militias.

Courts have long held that protections are very different at the border. For example a police officer cannot search your car without either your consent or "reasonable suspicion" of wrong-doing. But searches of cars at border crossings are common and legal.

Government policy has long been that the border is a lot bigger than you would expect. Government officers often exceed official policy, and courts have been known to rule in their favor when they do so. See https://www.aclu.org/constitution-100-mile-border-zone for some interesting stuff.

(I have personally been stopped by the border patrol many miles from the border...)

The justification for warrantless dragnet surveillance is to stop terrorists. The damage terrorists cause is literally negligeable when judged by your argument. If the Constitution was designed to react to military threats, terrorism is not a threat. You're more likely to die slipping in the shower than get killed by a terrorist, which is not the case when at war with another nation.

And this doesn't even touch on whether dragnet surveillance is actually effective (which it can't be, even in principle). As such, the justification for dragnet surveillance is so thin it's comical.

Besides that, it's almost certainly the case that terrorism has resulted in more deaths than has warrantless dragnet surveillance of cross-border traffic.

> Besides that, it's almost certainly the case that terrorism has resulted in more deaths than has warrantless dragnet surveillance of cross-border traffic.

I don't see how that's relevant one whit. We don't control terrorist actions, we do control our own government's actions, and the latter's actions are restricted by the constitution.

It is a clear as daylight protection of against governmental abuse. And honestly I don't know about you, but I rather have my house searched then my computers any day of the week. One's a place I sleep, the other has deep insights on me as an individual.

The question of the heart of most modern fourth amendment debates is what constitutes a search (and, by extension, requires a warrant). For example, does the government require a warrant to work with the phone company to tap my line [0].

The original push for the 4th amendment protections were abuses of the writ of assistance, wherein British authorities could search any house and seize contraband. [1]. As far as I can tell, the fourth amendment was designed as a protection of property rights and against governmental harassment. I have not seen any evidence that it was written with privacy rights in mind.

In Katz v United States [2] Justice Stewart, in the majority opinion, wrote:

the Fourth Amendment cannot be translated into a general constitutional "right to privacy." That Amendment protects individual privacy against certain kinds of governmental intrusion, but its protections go further, and often have nothing to do with privacy at all. [n4] Other provisions of the Constitution protect personal privacy from other forms of governmental invasion. [n5] But the protection of a person's general right to privacy -- his right to be let alone by other people [n6] -- is, like the [p351] protection of his property and of his very life, left largely to the law of the individual States.

[0] Or rather, does the fourth amendment require the government to get a warrant. [1] Yes, this process was highly suspectable to abuse. The most relevant modern analogy would be civil forfeiture. [2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/389/347#writin...