Absolutely all your data is available for sale by data brokers. Need to get rid of those first. Then the government would need warrants where they don’t need warrants to just buy your data.

If you've worked in government, you'd know that that bar for getting a subpoena or warrant is far lower and less strenuous than getting a purchase order.

Which is also a problem that needs fixed. A search warrant should be extremely difficult to get. "The person is suspicious and we think we will find xyz illegal item" is not enough. An arrest alone shouldn't be enough either. Police/detectives should have to prove, beyond all reasonable doubt, that what they are looking for is actually there to get the warrant.

That’s not the standard for a warrant. That standard is “reasonable belief”.

The standard for a warrant is probable cause, which is more stringent than reasonable belief.

Reasonable belief is what allows for police to take warrantless actions. Cop sees someone in a neighborhood walking around looking inside car windows and trying door handles. He now has reasonable belief enough to temporarily detain that person and ask what he's doing. No arrest or search may be conducted.

vs.

A court issued warrant requires probable cause. Cop let the suspect go in the first example (as he should with no probable cause for an arrest), and the next day someone in the neighborhood reports that their car was broken into and their laptop stolen. Cop checks local pawn shops and finds the laptop, the person that sold it to the pawn shop is the same person the cop stopped last night. NOW the cop has enough probable cause to seek a search warrant to look for other stolen items.

Point being, reasonable belief or reasonable suspicion isn't and shouldn't be enough to search or detain. You need probable cause, and that probable cause needs to be affirmed by a judge and a warrant issued.

You think the standards for a warrant and conviction should be the same?

No, I had my wording mixed up. I meant to say probable cause, not beyond reasonable doubt.

The problem is the standard for probable cause is becoming too low. The courts often just rubber stamp warrants. We need systems in place to make sure warrants are only issued when the facts presented are so compelling that there is no possible doubt that probable cause doesn't exist rather than just the bare minimum to get rubber stamped by a judge.

Insufficient corroboration is already basis to refuse a warrant, but in practice that doesn't always happen. You are at the mercy of the police and court system and if you don't have the resources (money) to appeal and get your conviction overturned, you get screwed.

Police are not filling out purchase orders to query an API they already have a contract with.

The purchase order was already taken care of a long time ago, because police loved being able to get around warrants and love dragnet surveillance.

Ouch

Generally, laws can't be applied retroactively. If you're in a regime that ignores that, then there really isn't a sense of law anymore to worry about.

A binary view is incorrect. Governments not having records of Jews would not have stopped the Holocaust. But this killed some people who could have escaped.

And the problem is not limited to retroactive laws. Phone scanning was another example in their comment. A regime could use this to restrict future communication even if they did not punish past communication.