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Let's distinguish a couple things to keep the thread on track.

First, this isn't about probable cause. Probable cause is necessary for an invasion of privacy to obtain evidence of a crime.

You do not need ANY probable cause to observe individuals acting in public. You might need a warrant to enter their home to search. You might need a lawful arrest to search their car, depending on the jurisdiction.

If you get pulled over and you have a plastic bag full of white powder sticking halfway out of the seat cushion of your car, the police will invoke what is known as the "plain view" doctrine. Matter that could be evidence of a crime (the bag, for those scoring at home) that is in "plain view" is admissible as evidence, even though it might be in your car.

Does anybody doubt that for law enforcement to do its job, officers have to be able to monitor public spaces for suspicious activity?

The way I see it, if the beat cop can do it, then LEOs can do it with a video camera. The fact that it's recorded just makes for more reliable evidence: there are people in prison whose crime was initially observed by police officers, and their word alone was sufficient for the jury. Having a video record would only seem to enhance the reliability of the evidence, assuming you have sufficient procedural safeguards in place to avoid tampering. And we have such safeguards in place for physical matter like weapons, drugs, blood, etc., so there's no reason to assume that the video is any more likely to be tampered with than blood planted or the ballistics report altered, etc.

WRT the public network, the reasonableness of your expectation of privacy depends, I suppose, on the contract with your ISP. I'm typing this right now from a computer owned by my employer, and I've implied my consent to them monitoring the bitstream (probably also acknowledged their use policy), so it's public domain. So's this forum, for that matter. Sending messages over the public internet requires many, many different hops, between potentially hundreds of carriers. The fact is, each of these is subject to the provisions of the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act (Oct. 25, 2001).

Again, distinguish between PUBLIC and PRIVATE behavior. I'm not trying to convince anyone but just wanted to get a sample of peoples views. Most folks seem to feel that they KNOW they don't have any privacy in public but don't LIKE the idea of LEOs watching/taping.