Word: warranted
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...conduct of the meeting and were they given warning to cease at the time? Since the meeting occurred indoors in a university and was not a campaign rally, the Court, were it to hear such a case, might feel that the customs and usages of such an event would warrant a narrower definition of permissive conduct than applied in the Tunney case...
...restaurant. On the basis of the agents' eavesdropping testimony, White was convicted of seven drug offenses, fined $35,000 and sentenced to 25 years in prison. A U.S. appeals court later threw out the conviction on the ground that the agents had failed to get a judge-approved warrant and therefore the bugging violated the Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches and seizures...
Four Justices disagreed, arguing that where monitored meetings are prearranged, as in the White case, the Government has a minimal obligation to get a warrant before listening in. Justice John Harlan called third-party bugging a danger that could undermine even the most innocent confidential relationships between citizens. "Were third-party bugging a prevalent practice," said Harlan, "it might well smother that spontaneity-reflected in frivolous, impetuous, sacrilegious and defiant discourse-that liberates daily life...
After years of confusion over the legalities of electronic eavesdropping, Congress attempted to set rules in the Omnibus Crime Control Act of 1968. Law-enforcement agencies were permitted to wiretap in ordinary criminal cases, provided they first obtained a court-approved warrant. Under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, such warrants require "probable cause"-proof that officials are probing with specific evidence of a crime, not just trying to trap possible wrongdoers. The 1968 law, though, did not limit the President's power "to obtain foreign intelligence information deemed essential to the security of the United States...
Serious Threat. Unfortunately, the law did not say whether the President's agents need warrants in such cases. The Supreme Court has not ruled on that subject-nor has it ever suggested that warrants are unnecessary in cases of domestic subversion. Yet Attorney General John Mitchell has authorized no-warrant wiretaps of domestic radicals who Mitchell is convinced pose a serious threat to national security. According to Mitchell, the Government's authority is implicit in the President's power to wage war and protect the country; he is the first Attorney General to make such a claim...