It's not false equivalence, we were talking about communications between people. Corporations don't write emails, people do. A corporation, big or small, is just a legal way of definining the property of people, and the people who work for it (who may or may not also own some of it) are people. Communications between them are communications between people.

What they're saying is that people deserve privacy, unless what they're doing has some relationship to making money, in which case they do not.

As much as I dislike corporations I dislike a tyranny even more. A cooperation is not magic, they are just collections of people. Each person in a cooperation should be afforded the same rights as each person outside a cooperation. Are your personal phone records, emails, text messages stored /just in case/ you commit a crime?

Once you define a class as having less rights (for better or worse) you've created a breach.

The 4th and 5th Amendment:

  4th: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

  5th: No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Suppose a group of people agree amongst themselves to work together to produce and sell a good or service.

Are these people entitled to the rights you're talking about? They're people, so I think you must say that they are.

OTOH, to all intents and purposes these people are behaving like a corporation. How can it be that corporations are denied those rights, but groups of people that behave exactly like corporations -- that are corporations, in all but name -- are entitled to them?

The flaw that is limiting your thinking and understanding is companies don’t do things, only people can do things. Until you start seeing companies as a group of people, you can’t understand and predict how a “company” will act and behave. When a sales person is selling a product, it is a person who is acting, they may follow some policies, but another person made those policies. You need to expand your thinking into the individual people.

> People get rights and benefit of the doubt. Corporations do not.

Corporations are just groups of people. Unless you're accusing a company of being ran by AGI.