Probable cause is defined by the "totality of circumstance" test established in Illinois v. Gates (462 U.S. 213) (1983), overturning the two-pronged test in which prosecutors tried to rely on an informant's "veracity," "reliability" and "basis of knowledge" and were found by the Illinois Supreme Court to be "highly irrelevant".
The flawed assertions by the prosecution in the 'Illinois' case sound as close as can be to Bush's and Hayden's 'reasonableness' standard. Where is the 'totality of circumstances' in the wide net they cast with their random wiretaps and data mining?
The FISA law doesn't leave any room for their loose standard of judgment. That's why we established the FISA courts. It's absurd for the Bush regime to assume they alone should have the authority to unilaterally determine whether they have met the threshold required to conduct surveillance on Americans. That judgment should be made within the democratic system of due process that our representatives clearly intended for the FISA to represent.
In wartime, a weak franchise may wrongfully view opposition as treason and seek to crush it. But, in the absence of the full consent of the governed, and in the shunning of the very constitutional protections our leaders swore to uphold and defend, such a heavy hand by the omnipresent government could rightly be seen as tyranny.
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