We're having an informative one, because you said:
> The data in my drafts folder is exactly the same as data in a paper journal that I have in my house, and is protected by exactly the same law, the 4th amendment.
The use of "is protected" versus "should be protected" seems to me to be inviting an informative discussion, not a normative one.
As an aside, I'm always surprised by how often people on HN talk about "should" versus "is." That's very weird for the engineer in me. You can never make progress in a normative discussion, at best you can boil the disagreement down to a disagreement in principle and leave it at that. E.g. I don't trust the government less than I do Google, Facebook, etc. If I'm willing to write something in my gmail, where a Googler can see it, I'm okay with the government seeing it. You almost certainly have a different perception of privacy and trust. A normative discussion on the subject is thus futile--who is "right" about what who and how much to trust private companies versus the government?
> I'm always surprised by how often people on HN talk about "should" versus "is."
Perhaps we make this distinction because it's an important one. It always surprises me when an engineer confuses the two. "But the courts say that the gov't can access your data if it's not on your property," is NOT a counter argument to the statement "The 4th amendment should extend to data." The conversation cannot move forward unless both sides understand the difference between "should" and "is".
> The data in my drafts folder is exactly the same as data in a paper journal that I have in my house, and is protected by exactly the same law, the 4th amendment.
The use of "is protected" versus "should be protected" seems to me to be inviting an informative discussion, not a normative one.
As an aside, I'm always surprised by how often people on HN talk about "should" versus "is." That's very weird for the engineer in me. You can never make progress in a normative discussion, at best you can boil the disagreement down to a disagreement in principle and leave it at that. E.g. I don't trust the government less than I do Google, Facebook, etc. If I'm willing to write something in my gmail, where a Googler can see it, I'm okay with the government seeing it. You almost certainly have a different perception of privacy and trust. A normative discussion on the subject is thus futile--who is "right" about what who and how much to trust private companies versus the government?