OK. Yes the framers of the constitution did create protections from the government for themselves, and shared that with the rest of the population. As you imply it is hard to know if the general case was a side-effect or original intent.

At the same time they purposefully sought to disenfranchise the majority so that they might change the rules at any time.

So the constitution within the constitution is that the government will protect the wealthy, and that makes sense given who was writing it.

It appears that the ruling elites now value control of the population over privacy. I see two possible explanations but perhaps there are others.

* They see the incredible growth of poverty in the US and there is no vast neighboring region in which to exterminate existing inhabitants and settle. Hence wealth protection from the masses is a higher priority than the privacy protections.

* Mass media has distorted the scale of the disenfranchising effects of our system (rich have more control and poor even less) and the wealthy realise they can use their control of the government to make huge fortunes. For example the profits of the banks are derived by transfer of wealth from taxpayers through implicit insurance since insurance allows highly profitable high risk strategies. They then choose short term profits over privacy / human rights.

In any case they choose to exercise their rights under the constitution within the constitution to change the laws to bring about repression and control.

I'm not really rebutting your point here. Instead I want to highlight that what is happening now IS consistent with the ideals of governance around during the formation of the US and what has changed is likely a lower level 'priority'

"though the foundational period of the US had a surprisingly level of wealth equality compared to some other periods"

You must be excluding both the African slaves and indigenous American population from your analysis.