And you have just put your finger on why I get so irritated on threads like these. A lawyer who golfs with a politician (aka a ‘judge’) makes some dumb$$ ruling, which then becomes ‘precedent’, which then must be upheld because of the concept of ‘stare decisis’. So the Feds and police go forth with the dumba$$ ruling in hand and We the People get trampled. The Constitution gets shredded.
And now we get to where we are now. Warrantless tracing and eavesdropping is considered acceptable because of ‘practical’ law enforcement purposes. Incrementalism does indeed work.