The 4th amendment does not ban searches and seizures without a warrant. It bans "unreasonable" searches and seizures without a warrant. If the founders hadn't meant for the courts to try and distinguish between "reasonable" and "unreasonable" searches, they wouldn't have used the word. But they did--they embedded this balancing between privacy rights and the needs of law enforcement in the very text of the 4th amendment.
All of the programs you mentioned, phone metadata collection, the TSA, fall within the recognized contours of what the Supreme Court has recognized as "reasonable" searches.
Now, that's not to say that the Supreme Court's interpretations are the best ones, or that people can't advocate for a different interpretation. What it does mean is that the people supporting these programs can do so with the entirely good faith belief that they are not violating clearly established Constitutional law.
'It bans "unreasonable" searches and seizures without a warrant.'
It bans unreasonable searches and seizures, period.
Hopefully, a warrant will only be issued when the search is reasonable, and a search with more oversight and checks will be more reasonable than the same search without.
The Fourth Amendment does not demand a warrant for every search. Only on Internet message boards has this not been a settled issue since before our grandparents were all born.
To understand why the Fourth Amendment governs both searches and warrants, it's helpful to read up on what a "General Warrant" was at the time of the founders. Hint: they often didn't really have much to do with generating evidence.
The Amendment has two goals: first, to give the courts, rather than Congress or the President, authority in determining what a valid search is, and second to ensure that no branch of government could arbitrarily generate a piece of paper authorizing police to turn someone's house inside out.
I think you misinterpreted me. I didn't say every search must have a warrant. I said every search must be reasonable, and that a warrant makes some otherwise-unreasonable searches reasonable.
At what point in history did searches without a warrant expand from border searches and searches by consent, and when did a standard of "reasonableness" come to mean "it doesn't need a warrant?"
If you want to get into the heads of founders you should read further up where it says that the document delegates powers to the state, rather than granting rights to the citizens.
So what you should be looking for is a delegation of the right to search with out a warrant, it's not there.
There is also no explicit delegation of the power to search with a warrant. By your reasoning, the federal government never has he power to conduct any search. Which renders the 4th amendment gibberish, because why prohibit "unreasonable" searches and set out the requirements for a warrant in that case?
The Constitution gives the federal government sole authority over national security, from both domestic and external threats. That was in fact one of the purposes of creating the federal government (the states' trouble in putting down Shays' rebellion). It also gives the federal government authority over interstate commerce. Ensuring the security of planes from terrorism is right at the core of what the federal government was created to do.
All of the programs you mentioned, phone metadata collection, the TSA, fall within the recognized contours of what the Supreme Court has recognized as "reasonable" searches.
Now, that's not to say that the Supreme Court's interpretations are the best ones, or that people can't advocate for a different interpretation. What it does mean is that the people supporting these programs can do so with the entirely good faith belief that they are not violating clearly established Constitutional law.