Key word: "their." The lynchpin or a lot of the surveillance efforts is accessing information that doesn't belong to the target of the surveillance. Phone call metadata is generated by the phone company, stored in the phone company's computers, and is used for the phone company's business purposes. Its the phone company's data, not yours. Same thing with the data Google and Facebook collect about where you go on the internet. You didn't generate it and you can't even access it. How can you say its "yours?" Its "about you" but that's totally different. If your neighbor keeps a diary tracking your comings and goings, you can't assert 4th amendment protection over that data.
Privacy advocates talk about "metadata is data" as if the government's lawyers don't understand that bits are just bits. What privacy advocates don't understand is that the "metadata" distinction is about generation, ownership, and control, which are implicated in the 4th amendment by the word "their."
Putting aside what the law and constitution currently say, do you think mass surveillance of metadata, URL tracking and search history should be fair game?
I'm pretty apathetic to the whole issue. I'm a lot more worked up about the fact that these things are already fair game when it comes to private corporations. As someone who isn't hoping for some libertarian, trans-national world order based on the internet, I'm a lot more worried about how private companies can abuse that data than how the government can do so. Yes, the government can throw me in jail and private companies can't, but the government has little reason to want me in jail. Meanwhile, private companies have a lot of incentive to access that data and screw me over.
I think the libertarianness of the whole digital privacy movement is losing a lot of potential supporters. If the restrictions on government surveillance were bundled together with restrictions on corporate surveillance with a consumer protection angle, I think you'd get a lot more people on board.
> but the government has little reason to want me in jail
It has plenty of reason to want dissidents in jail which you may care about for various reasons both practical and ideological. Though I think jail is outmoded: with (near) total surveillance there are more effective deterrents.
I do think you are right about the lack of emphasis on corporate surveillance.
Privacy advocates talk about "metadata is data" as if the government's lawyers don't understand that bits are just bits. What privacy advocates don't understand is that the "metadata" distinction is about generation, ownership, and control, which are implicated in the 4th amendment by the word "their."