getting a warrant requires probable cause, and a judge to approve it. maybe that's not hard, maybe it is, but i'd personally prefer more steps being required to access what data i have.
Indeed. It's the difference between already having substantive reason to believe you committed a crime, and surveilling you willy-nilly looking for a crime to pin on you. The less arbitrary access law enforcement has to your data, the more difficult the latter becomes.
Exactly. There are some judges that will rubber stamp warrants without even looking at them closely, but there are still plenty who don't and there's a paper trail as well that provides some protections. When you just go to where no warrant is required, it won't make a difference when the police want to get a specific person, but it will make a big difference on whether they are able to surveil wide swathes of the population and how easy it all is for them.
In Germany it's the same in theory, in reality even bogus causes are approved by the judges who neither the time and knowledge to really check the inquiry.
In the United States, protection from unlawful search and seizure has been in our constitution since the very beginning through the fourth amendment. This is a critical component of what we believe are human rights, so we will continue to insist that law enforcement should "get a fuckin warrant" if they want to dig through our personal data, regardless of your opinion on how easily that warrant will be granted.
