If it doesn't meet legal standard nop the fuck out of here. Why even have a legal standard if you can bypass it and do whatever you want?

I didn't suggest they should. I'm saying a "doesn't meet the legal standard" != "not investigating a crime."

i see. when you are investigating a crime and you break or bypass the law I would say that the investigation should not happen in the first place. Everything has to be done within the legal framework that our society is allegedly built on or we descend into anarchy.

Legally this is already the case in the US. Obviously not always followed, but investigators do get hit on the point very frequently.

Feds got a search warrant for me because an unnamed dog I never met accused me of wrongdoing and told an unnamed officer who told a named detective who told a judge. The bar is low. Sounds like they need an imaginary dog that can't be held to testify so we'll just have to believe it .

Technically that unnamed dog accusing you of wrongdoing is all it takes for a search of your car and person.

If they don't have enough evidence it's hard to say that have substantial reasons. It sounds like they have a hunch.

They don't even need to have a hunch. They just need to say they do, and in the cases where it even goes in front of a judge, it gets rubberstamped with a 97%+ approval rate.

Sure, different claim than "they're not investigating a crime."

> That is to say, they're targeting individuals who they have no substantial reason to believe actually did anything wrong.

> That isn't true. It means it wouldn't reach probable cause.

So, investigating a crime should lead you to some evidence that you would than have a substantial reason to request a warrant to target an individual. You're letting the tail wag the dog if they can do the targeting before they know who to target. If they don't have any evidence to target a person but they suspect that person of doing something illegal then that's called a hunch. Scooby doo and his gang were great at following hunches, but that shouldn't be how the FBI operates.

GP's comment was edited. It originally said: "That is to say, they're not even investigating a crime."

But they aren't investigating a crime!

The reason for allowing them to spy on foreigners isn't because foreigners are criminals. It's because we believe surveillance of foreigners might provide some protection for us. They are trying to prevent crimes, not solve them.