You are subtly changing &quot;legal searches of suspects with prerequisite probable cause&quot; to &quot;legal assassination&quot; of a bunch of unstated people. That should change the reasoning involved. So I believe you are using a faulty analogy.<p>First, there is a huge difference in consequences. If you search a phone and nothing is there then the person isn&#x27;t significantly harmed. Killing someone is a huge consequence and it&#x27;s irreparable.<p>Second, the court proceedings insure we are only searching people who deserve it. You leave that out in your assassination hypo. The standards for deserving a search are lower than deserving to get killed, at least they should be. So you can&#x27;t compare the two. But assuming the president ordered the assassinations of people we knew deserved it--known terrorists, spies, genociders, etc--I&#x27;d still say &quot;what&#x27;s the problem&quot;<p>Finally, you are substituting in something that most people consider inherently immoral. I think it&#x27;s pretty clear a search of a phone to recover evidence is not inherently immoral. But many would say that there is never a reason to assassinate someone.