> At the same time, one of the motivating reasons for creating the Constitution as a whole was to create a powerful executive with broad authority to react to military threats, both external and internal. Why is it more faithful to the Constitution to give more weight to the 4th amendment and less weight to the President's broad powers as to national security?
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.
People do not think that accidental deaths are comparable to intentional killings. We have elaborate mechanisms to distinguish the two because our fundamental outlook is that one is much more serious than the other.
Besides that, it's almost certainly the case that terrorism has resulted in more deaths than has warrantless dragnet surveillance of cross-border traffic.
Intention is irrelevant to the argument I presented. The example I presented merely illustrates the level of risk, which is ridiculously low, and certainly doesn't justify military involvement.
> 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.
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.