I guess I can take the time to explain probable cause and good faith to Munchkin. Yeah, you hear probable cause all the time on TV and in movies. It happens in real life as well but in the last 20 or so years the term good faith has entered the legal lexicon. With all the techical and virtual shit going on a judge can't be expected to understand...let's say a program that the experts say indicates a crime was committed. So now they are arguing "good faith". Did the person who made the case to the judge really believe what they had been told by a techie? Same thing as a detective stopping someone's car based on the verbal accusation of a confidential informant. The defense will definitely challenge the admission of the stop but the judge will have to decide whether or not the detective acted in "good faith". In other words, did he have any reasonable cause to disbelieve what the CI said to him? So in this context, a FISA judge signed off on a warrant. What did they tell him to get the warrant? Was it reasonable and did the agent act in good faith? Of course, you have to ask where they got the information that was the basis of the warrant. An illegal wire tap perhaps? Even darker, someone with a political agenda who just made things up.
Originally Posted by JD Barleycorn
If there was a foreign national talking to someone in the tower on a regular basis, it would be probational cause for a tap.