Sure, but the Supreme Court also uses narrow implication-following. Existing rules or precedents generate another precedent. And society is doing the same thing with path-dependent adoption of technology.<p>As computer scientists, we know this can only lead to eventual contradictions. Old concepts are subsumed with new definitions in different abstractions. &quot;Plan to meet up for dinner&quot; used to mean a face-to-face talk when you bumped into someone on the street or, later, over two direct analog wires that were equally ephemeral as long as nobody was a priori recording. Now it means digital messages that are automatically stored indefinitely.<p>The right to privacy should apply generally to each definition, but when you analyze with local reasoning of course the latter message is voluntarily stored on a bazillion servers and sent over tapped fibre.<p>Which is why I gave some other concrete examples. Do a plain reading of the 6th and 7th amendments, and wonder why a speeding ticket does not result in a jury trial. But follow the path of legal reasoning that got us to the present condition, and you can see how the ideals were subsumed and discarded.