Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/388/41
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 17:54:31+00:00

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This contention is disposed of in Warden, Maryland Penitentiary v. Hayden, 387 U.S. 294, adversely to petitioner's assertion here.
I join the opinion of the Court because, at long last, it overrules sub silentio Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, and its offspring, and brings wiretapping and other electronic eavesdropping fully within the purview of the Fourth Amendment. I also join the opinion because it condemns electronic surveillance, for its similarity to the general warrants out of which our Revolution sprang and allows a discreet surveillance only on a showing of "probable cause." These safeguards are minimal if we are to live under a regime of wiretapping and other electronic surveillance.
Yet there persists my overriding objection to electronic surveillance viz., that it is a search for "mere evidence" which, as I have maintained on other occasions (Osborn v. United States, 385 U.S. 323, 349-354), is a violation of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, no matter with what nicety and precision a warrant may be drawn, a proposition that I developed in detail in my dissent in Warden v. Hayden, 387 U.S. 294, 312, decided only the other day.
A discreet selective wiretap or electronic "bugging" is, of course, not rummaging around, collecting everything in the particular time and space zone. But even though it is limited in time, it is the greatest of all invasions of privacy. It places a government agent in the bedroom, in the business conference, in the social hour, in the [p65] lawyer's office -- everywhere and anywhere a "bug" can be placed.
The traditional wiretap or electronic eavesdropping device constitutes a dragnet, sweeping in all conversations within its scope -- without regard to the participants or the nature of the conversations. It intrudes upon the privacy of those not even suspected of crime, and intercepts the most intimate of conversations. Thus, in the Coplon case (United States v. Coplon, 91 F.Supp. 867, rev'd, 191 F.2d 749) wiretaps of the defendant's home and office telephones recorded conversations between the defendant and her mother, a quarrel between a husband and wife who had no connection with the case, and conferences between the defendant and her attorney concerning the preparation of briefs, testimony of government witnesses, selection of jurors and trial strategy. Westin, The Wire-Tapping Problem: An Analysis and a Legislative Proposal, 52 Col.L.Rev. 165, 170-171 (1952); Barth, The Loyalty of Free Men 173 (1951). It is also reported that the FBI incidentally learned about an affair, totally unrelated to espionage, between the defendant and a Justice Department attorney. Barth, supra at 173. While tapping one telephone, police recorded conversations involving, at the other end, The Juilliard School of Music, Brooklyn Law School, [p66] Consolidated Radio Artists, Western Union, Mercantile Commercial Bank, several restaurants, a real estate company, a drug store, many attorneys, an importer, a dry cleaning establishment, a number of taverns, a garage, and the Prudential Insurance Company. Westin, supra, at 188, n. 112. These cases are but a few of many demonstrating the sweeping nature of electronic total surveillance as we know it today.
It is, of course, possible for a statute to provide that wiretap or electronic eavesdrop evidence is admissible only in a prosecution for the crime to which the showing of probable cause related. See Nev.Rev.Stat. § 200.680 (1963). But such a limitation would not alter the fact that the order authorizes a general search. Whether or not the evidence obtained is used at a trial for another crime, the privacy of the individual has been infringed by the interception of all of his conversations. And even though the information is not introduced as evidence, it can and probably will be used as leads and background information. Again, a statute could provide that evidence developed from eavesdrop information could not be used at trial. Cf. Silverthorne Lumber Co., Inc. v. United States, 251 U.S. 385, 392; Nardone v. United States, 308 U.S. 338; Silverman v. United States, 365 U.S. 505. But, under a regime of total surveillance, where a multitude of conversations are recorded, it would be very difficult to show which aspects of the information had been used as investigative information.
In searching for seizable matters, the police must necessarily see or hear, and comprehend, items which do not relate to the purpose of the search.
That is precisely why the Fourth Amendment made any such rummaging around unconstitutional, [p67] even though supported by a formally adequate warrant. That underwrites my dissent in Hayden.
That is the essence of my dissent in Hayden. In short, I do not see how any electronic surveillance that collects evidence or provides leads to evidence is or can be constitutional under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. We could amend the Constitution and so provide -- a step that would take us closer to the ideological group we profess to despise. Until the amending process ushers us into that kind of totalitarian regime, I would adhere to the protection of privacy which the Fourth Amendment, fashioned in Congress and submitted to the people, [p68] was designed to afford the individual. And unlike my Brother BLACK, I would adhere to Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, and apply the exclusionary rule in state as well as federal trials -- a rule fashioned out of the Fourth Amendment and constituting a high constitutional barricade against the intrusion of Big Brother into the lives of all of us.
I fully agree with MR. JUSTICE BLACK, MR. JUSTICE HARLAN, and MR. JUSTICE WHITE that this New York law is entirely constitutional. In short, I think that "electronic eavesdropping, as such or as it is permitted by this statute, is not an unreasonable search and seizure." [n1] The statute contains many provisions more stringent than the Fourth Amendment generally requires, as MR. JUSTICE BLACK has so forcefully pointed out. And the petitioner himself has told us that the law's "reasonable grounds" requirement "is undisputedly equivalent to the probable cause requirement of the Fourth Amendment." This is confirmed by decisions of the New York courts. People v. Cohen, 42 Misc.2d 403, 248 N.Y.S.2d 339; People v. Beshany, 43 Misc.2d 521, 252 N.Y.S.2d 110; People v. Grossman, 45 Misc.2d 557, 257 N.Y.S.2d 266. Of course, a state court's construction of a state statute is binding upon us.
This might be enough to satisfy the standards of the Fourth Amendment for a conventional search or arrest. Cf. Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108, 116 (dissenting opinion). But I think it was constitutionally insufficient to constitute probable cause to justify an intrusion of the scope and duration that was permitted in this case. Accordingly, I would reverse the judgment.
1. Dissenting opinion of MR. JUSTICE HARLAN, post, p. 89, at 94.
2. See dissenting opinion of MR. JUSTICE BLACK, post, p. 70, at 83.
there is reasonable ground to believe that evidence of crime may be thus obtained, and particularly describing the person or persons whose communications, conversations or discussions are to be overheard or recorded, and the purpose thereof. . . .
N.Y.Code Crim.Proc. § 813-a. Evidence obtained by such electronic eavesdropping was used to convict the petitioner here of conspiracy to bribe the chairman of the State Liquor Authority, which controls the issuance of liquor licenses in New York. It is stipulated that, without this evidence, a conviction could not have been obtained, and it seems apparent that use of that evidence showed petitioner to be a briber beyond all reasonable doubt. Notwithstanding petitioner's obvious guilt, however, the Court now strikes down his conviction in a way that plainly makes it impossible ever to convict him again. This is true because the Court not only holds that the judicial orders which were the basis of the authority to eavesdrop were insufficient, but also [p71] holds that the New York eavesdropping statute is, on its face, violative of the Fourth Amendment. And while the Court faintly intimates to the contrary, it seem obvious to me that its holding, by creating obstacles that cannot be overcome, makes it completely impossible for the State or the Federal Government ever to have a valid eavesdropping statute. All of this is done, it seems to me, in part because of the Court's hostility to eavesdropping as "ignoble" and "dirty business" [n1] and in part because of fear that rapidly advancing science and technology is making eavesdropping more and more effective. Cf. Lopez v. United States, 373 U.S. 427, 446 (dissenting opinion of BRENNAN, J.). Neither these nor any other grounds that I can think of are sufficient, in my judgment, to justify a holding that the use of evidence secured by eavesdropping is barred by the Constitution.
Eavesdroppers have always been deemed competent witnesses in English and American courts. The main test of admissibility has been relevance and first-hand [p72] knowledge, not by whom or by what method proffered evidence was obtained. It is true that, in England, people who obtained evidence by unlawful means were held liable in damages, as in Entick v. Carrington, 19 How.St.Tr. 1029. But even that famous civil liberties case made no departure from the traditional common law rule that relevant evidence is admissible even though obtained contrary to ethics, morals, or law. And, for reasons that follow, this evidentiary rule is well adapted to our Government, set up as it was to "insure domestic tranquility" under a system of laws.
The eavesdrop evidence here shows this petitioner to be a briber, a corrupter of trusted public officials, a poisoner of the honest administration of government, upon which good people must depend to obtain the blessings of a decent orderly society. No man's privacy, property, liberty, or life is secure if organized or even unorganized criminals can go their way unmolested, ever [p73] and ever further in their unbounded lawlessness. However obnoxious eavesdroppers may be, they are assuredly not engaged in a more "ignoble" or "dirty business" than are bribers, thieves, burglars, robbers, rapists, kidnapers, and murderers, not to speak of others. And it cannot be denied that, to deal with such specimens of our society, eavesdroppers are not merely useful, they are frequently a necessity. I realize that some may say, "Well, let the prosecuting officers use more scientific measures than eavesdropping." It is always easy to hint at mysterious means available just around the corner to catch outlaws. But crimes, unspeakably horrid crimes, are with us in this country, and we cannot afford to dispense with any known method of detecting and correcting them unless it is forbidden by the Constitution or deemed inadvisable by legislative policy -- neither of which I believe to be true about eavesdropping.
The plain facts are, however, that there is no inherent danger to a defendant in using these electronic recordings [p74] except that which results from the use of testimony that is so unerringly accurate that it is practically bound to bring about a conviction. In other words, this kind of transcribed eavesdropping evidence is far more likely to lead a judge or jury to reach a correct judgment or verdict -- the basic and always-present objective of a trial.
neutral and detached authority be interposed between the police and the public, Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, [p76] 14.
Had the framers of this Amendment desired to prohibit the use in court of evidence secured by an unreasonable search or seizure, they would have used plain appropriate language to do so, just as they did in prohibiting the use of enforced self-incriminatory evidence in the Fifth Amendment. Since the Fourth Amendment contains no language forbidding the use of such evidence, I think there is no such constitutional rule. So I continue to believe that the exclusionary rule formulated to bar such evidence in the Weeks [n2] case is not rooted in the Fourth Amendment, but rests on the "supervisory power" of this Court over the other federal courts -- the same judicial power invoked in McNabb v. United States, 318 U.S. 332. See my concurring opinions in Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U.S. 25, 39, and Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 661. [n3] For these reasons and others to be stated, I do not believe the Fourth Amendment, standing alone, even if applicable to electronic eavesdropping, commands exclusion of the overheard evidence in this case.
Justice Bradley in the Boyd case, and Justice Clark[e] in the Gouled case, said that the Fifth Amendment and the Fourth Amendment were to be liberally construed. . . . But that cannot justify enlargement of the language employed beyond the possible practical meaning of houses, persons, papers, and effects, or so to apply the words search and seizure as to forbid hearing or sight.
Fourth Amendmentmay protect against the overhearing of verbal statements as well as against the more traditional seizure of "papers and effects,"
371 U.S. at 485 (emphasis added), but in neither did the Court find it necessary to overrule Olmstead, an action that would have been required had the Court based its exclusion of the oral conversations solely on the ground of the Fourth Amendment. The fact is that both Silverman and Wong Sun were federal cases dealing with the use of verbal evidence in federal courts, and the Court held the evidence should be excluded by virtue of the exclusionary rule of the Weeks case. As I have previously pointed out, that rule rested on the Court's supervisory power over federal courts, not on the Fourth Amendment: it is not required by the Amendment, nor is a violation of the Amendment a prerequisite to its application. I would not have agreed with the Court's opinion in Silverman, which, by the way, cited Olmstead with approval, had I [p80] thought that the result depended on finding a violation of the Fourth Amendment, or had I any inkling that the Court's general statements about the scope of the Amendment were intended to negate the clear holding of Olmstead. And again, in Wong Sun, which did not even mention Olmstead, let alone overrule it, the Court clearly based its exclusion of oral statements made to federal agents during an illegal arrest on its supervisory power to deter lawless conduct by federal officers, and on the alternative ground that the incriminating statements were made under compulsive circumstances and were not the product of a free will. It is impossible for me to read into that non-eavesdropping federal case an intent to overrule Olmstead implicitly. In short, the only way this Court can escape Olmstead here is to overrule it. Without expressly saying so, the Court's opinion, as my Brother DOUGLAS acknowledges, does just that. And that overruling is accomplished by the simple expedient of substituting for the Amendment's words, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects" the words "The right of the people to be secure in their privacy," words the Court believes the Framers should have used, but did not. I have frequently stated my opposition to such judicial substitution. Although here the Court uses it to expand the scope of the Fourth Amendment to include words, the Court has been applying the same process to contract the Fifth Amendment's privilege against self-incrimination so as to exclude all types of incriminating evidence but words, or what the Court prefers to call "testimonial evidence." See United States v. Wade, post, p. 218; Gilbert v. California, post, p. 263.
There is yet another reason why I would adhere to the holding of Olmstead that the Fourth Amendment does not apply to eavesdropping. Since the Framers in the first clause of the Amendment specified that only persons, [p81] houses, and things were to be protected, they obviously wrote the second clause, regulating search warrants, in reference only to such tangible things. To hold, as the Court does, that the first clause protects words necessitates either a virtual rewriting of the particularity requirements of the Warrant Clause or a literal application of that clause's requirements and our cases construing them to situations they were never designed to cover. I am convinced that the Framers of the Amendment never intended this Court to do either, and yet it seems to me clear that the Court here does a little of both.
This case deals only with a trespassory eavesdrop, an eavesdrop accomplished by placing "bugging" devices in certain offices. Significantly, the Court does not purport to disturb the Olmstead-Silverman-Goldman distinction between eavesdrops which are accompanied by a physical invasion and those that are not. Neither does the Court purport to overrule the holdings of On Lee v. United States, 343 U.S. 747, and Lopez v. United States, 373 U.S. 427, which exempt from the Amendment's requirements the use of an electronic device to record, and perhaps even transmit, a conversation to [p82] which the user is a party. It is thus clear that at least certain types of electronic eavesdropping, until today, were completely outside the scope of the Fourth Amendment. Nevertheless, New York has made it a crime to engage in almost any kind of electronic eavesdropping, N.Y.Pen.Law § 738, and the only way eavesdropping, even the kind this Court has held constitutional, can be accomplished with immunity from criminal punishment is pursuant to § 813-a of the Code of Criminal Procedure, N.Y.Pen.Law § 739. The Court now strikes down § 813-a in its entirety, and that may well have the result of making it impossible for state law enforcement officers merely to listen through a closed door by means of an inverted cone or some other crude amplifying device, eavesdropping which this Court has to date refused to hold violative of the Fourth Amendment. Certainly there is no justification for striking down completely New York's statute, covering all kinds of eavesdropping, merely because it fails to contain the "strict precautions" which the Court derives -- or, more accurately, fabricates -- as conditions to eavesdrops covered by the Fourth Amendment. In failing to distinguish between types of eavesdropping and in failing to make clear that the New York statute is invalid only as applied to certain kinds of eavesdropping, the Court's opinion leaves the definite impression that all eavesdropping is governed by the Fourth Amendment. Such a step would require overruling of almost every opinion this Court has ever written on the subject. Indeed, from the Court's eavesdropping catalogue of horrors -- electronic rays beamed at walls, lapel and cuff-link microphones, and off-premise parabolic microphones -- it does not take too much insight to see that the Court is about ready to do, if it has not today done, just that.
I agree with my Brother WHITE that, instead of looking for technical defects in the language of the New [p83] York statute, the Court should examine the actual circumstances of its application in this case to determine whether petitioner's rights have here been violated. That to me seems to be the unavoidable task in any search and seizure case: was the particular search and seizure reasonable or not? We have just this Term held that a search and seizure without a warrant, and even without authorization of state law, can nevertheless, under all the circumstances, be "reasonable" for Fourth Amendment purposes. Cooper v. California, 386 U.S. 58. I do not see why that could not be equally true in the case of a search and seizure with a warrant and pursuant to a state law, even though the state law is itself too broad to be valid. Certainly a search and seizure may comply with the Fourth Amendment even in the absence of an authorizing statute which embodies the Amendment's requirements. Osborn v. United States, 385 U.S. 323, upon which the Court so heavily relies, is a good example of a case where the Court sustained the tape recording of a conversation by examining the particular circumstances surrounding it, even though no federal statute prescribed the precautions taken by the district judges there. Here, New York has gone much further than the Federal Government and most of the States to outlaw all eavesdropping except under the limited circumstances of § 813-a, a statute which, as I shall demonstrate, contains many more safeguards than the Fourth Amendment itself. But today New York fares far worse than those States which have done nothing to implement and supplement the Fourth Amendment: it must release a convicted criminal not because it has deprived him of constitutional rights, but because it has inartfully (according to the Court) tried to guarantee him those rights. The New York statute aside, the affidavits in this case were sufficient to justify a finding of probable cause, and the ex parte eavesdrop orders identified the [p84] person whose conversations were to be overheard, the place where the eavesdropping was to take place, and, when read in reference to the supporting affidavits, the type of conversations sought, i.e., those relating to extortion and bribery.
Thus, it seems impossible for the Court to condemn this statute on the ground that it lacks "adequate judicial supervision or protective procedures." Rather, the only way the Court can invalidate it is to find it lacking in some of the safeguards which the Court today fashions without any reference to the language of the Fourth Amendment whatsoever. In fact, from the deficiencies the Court finds in the New York statute, it seems that the Court would be compelled to strike down a state statute which merely tracked verbatim the language of the Fourth Amendment itself. First, the Court thinks the affidavits or the orders must particularize the crime being committed. The Fourth Amendment's particularity requirement relates to the place searched and the [p86] thing seized, not to the crime being committed. Second, the Court holds that two months for an eavesdrop order to be outstanding is too long. There are, however, no time limits of any kind in the Fourth Amendment other than the notion that a search should not last longer than reasonably necessary to search the place described in the warrant, and the extent of that place may also be limited by the concept of reasonableness. The Court does not explain why two months, regardless of the circumstances, is per se an unreasonable length of time to accomplish a verbal search. Third, the Court finds the statute deficient in not providing for a termination of the eavesdrop once the object is obtained and in not providing for a return of the warrant at that time. Where in the Fourth Amendment does the Court think it possible to find these requirements? Finally, the Court makes the fantastic suggestion that the eavesdropper must give notice to the person whose conversation is to be overheard or that the eavesdropper must show "exigent circumstances" before he can perform his eavesdrop without consent. Now, if never before, the Court's purpose is clear: it is determined to ban all eavesdropping. As the Court recognizes, eavesdropping "necessarily . . . depends on secrecy." Since secrecy is an essential, indeed a definitional, element of eavesdropping, when the Court says there shall be no eavesdropping without notice, the Court means to inform the Nation there shall be no eavesdropping -- period.
It should now be clear that, in order to strike down the New York law, the Court has been compelled to rewrite completely the Fourth Amendment. By substituting the word "privacy" for the language of the first clause of the Amendment, the Court expands the scope of the Amendment to include oral conversations; then, by applying the literal particularity requirements of the second clause without adjustment for the Court's expansion [p87] of the Amendment's scope, the Court makes constitutional eavesdropping improbable; and finally, by inventing requirements found in neither clause -- requirements with which neither New York nor any other State can possibly comply -- the Court makes such eavesdropping impossible. If the Fourth Amendment does not ban all searches and seizures, I do not see how it can possibly ban all eavesdrops.
Both the States and the National Government are at present confronted with a crime problem that threatens the peace, order, and tranquility of the people. There are, as I have pointed out, some constitutional commands that leave no room for doubt -- certain procedures must be followed by courts regardless of how much more difficult they make it to convict and punish for crime. These commands we should enforce firmly and to the letter. But my objection to what the Court does today is the picking out of a broad general provision against unreasonable searches and seizures and the erecting out of it a constitutional obstacle against electronic eavesdropping that makes it impossible for lawmakers to overcome. Honest men may rightly differ on the potential [p89] dangers or benefits inherent in electronic eavesdropping and wiretapping. See Lopez v. United States, supra. But that is the very reason that legislatures, like New York's, should be left free to pass laws about the subject, rather than be told that the Constitution forbids it on grounds no more forceful than the Court has been able to muster in this case.
Mr. Justice Holmes dissenting in Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 470.
Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383. Compare Adams v. New York, 192 U.S. 585.
I concurred in Mapp because "[t]he close interrelationship between the Fourth and Fifth Amendments," 367 U.S. at 662, as they applied to the facts of that case, required the exclusion there of the unconstitutionally seized evidence.
The Court in recent years has more and more taken to itself sole responsibility for setting the pattern of criminal law enforcement throughout the country. Time-honored distinctions between the constitutional protections afforded against federal authority by the Bill of Rights and those provided against state action by the Fourteenth Amendment have been obliterated, thus increasingly subjecting state criminal law enforcement policies to oversight by this Court. See, e.g., Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643; Ker v. California, 374 U.S. 23; Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U.S. 1; Murphy v. Waterfront Commission, 378 U.S. 52. Newly contrived constitutional rights have been established without any apparent concern for the empirical process that goes with legislative reform. See, e.g., Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436. And overlying the particular decisions to which this course has given rise is the fact that, short of future action by this Court, their impact can only be undone or modified by the slow and uncertain process of constitutional amendment.
Today's decision is in this mold. Despite the fact that the use of electronic eavesdropping devices as instruments of criminal law enforcement is currently being comprehensively addressed by the Congress and various other bodies in the country, the Court has chosen, quite unnecessarily, to decide this case in a manner which will seriously restrict, if not entirely thwart, such efforts, [p90] and will freeze further progress in this field, except as the Court may itself act or a constitutional amendment may set things right.
The Court declares, without further explanation, that, since petitioner was "affected" by § 813-a, he may challenge its validity on its face. Nothing in the cases of this Court supports this wholly ambiguous standard; the Court until now, has, in recognition of the intense difficulties so wide a rule might create for the orderly adjudication of constitutional issues, limited the situations in which state statutes may be challenged on their face. There is no reason here, apart from the momentary conveniences of this case, to abandon those limitations: none of the circumstances which have before properly been thought to warrant challenges of statutes on their face is present, cf. Thornhill v. Alabama, 310 U.S. 88, 98, and no justification for additional exceptions has been offered. See generally United States v. National Dairy Products Corp., 372 U.S. 29, 36; Aptheker v. Secretary of State, 378 U.S. 500, 521 ( dissenting opinion). Petitioner's rights, and those of others similarly situated, can be fully vindicated through the adjudication of the consistency [p91] with the Fourteenth Amendment of each eavesdropping order.
If the statute is to be assessed on its face, the Court should at least adhere to the principle that, for purposes of assessing the validity under the Constitution of a state statute, the construction given the statute by the State's courts is conclusive of its scope and meaning. Fox v. Washington, 236 U.S. 273; Winters v. New York, 333 U.S. 507; Poulos v. New Hampshire, 345 U.S. 395. This principle is ultimately a consequence of the differences in function of the state and federal judicial systems. The strength with which it has hitherto been held may be estimated in part by the frequency with which the Court has in the past declined to adjudicate issues, often of great practical and constitutional importance, until the state courts "have been afforded a reasonable opportunity to pass upon them." Harrison v. NAACP, 360 U.S. 167, 176. See, e.g., Railroad Comm'n v. Pullman Co., 312 U.S. 496; Spector Motor Service, Inc. v. McLaughlin, 323 U.S. 101; Shipman v. DuPre, 339 U.S. 321; Albertson v. Millard, 345 U.S. 242; Government Employees v. Windsor, 353 U.S. 364.
The Court today entirely disregards this principle. In its haste to give force to its distaste for eavesdropping, it has apparently resolved that no attention need be given to the construction of § 813-a, adopted by the state courts. Apart from a brief and partial acknowledgment, spurred by petitioner's concession that the state cases might warrant exploration, the Court has been content simply to compare the terms of the statute with the provisions of the Fourth Amendment; upon discovery that their words differ, it has concluded that the statute is constitutionally impermissible. In sharp contrast, when confronted by Fourth Amendment issues under a federal statute which did not, and does not [p92] now, reproduce ipsissimis verbis the Fourth Amendment, 26 U.S.C. § 7607(2), the Court readily concluded, upon the authority of cases in the courts of appeals, that the statute effectively embodied the Amendment's requirements. Draper v. United States, 358 U.S. 307, 310 n. And the Court, without the assistance even of state authorities, reached an identical conclusion as to a similar state statute in Ker v. California, 374 U.S. 23, 36 n. The circumstances of the present case do not come even within the narrow exceptions to the rule that the Court ordinarily awaits a state court's construction before adjudicating the validity of a state statute. Cf. Dombrowski v. Pfister, 380 U.S. 479; Baggett v. Bullitt, 377 U.S. 360. The Court has shown no justification for its disregard of existing and pertinent state authorities.
The Court's precipitate neglect of the New York cases is the more obviously regrettable when their terms are examined, for they make quite plain that the state courts have fully recognized the applicability of the relevant federal constitutional requirements, and that they have construed § 813-a in conformity with those requirements. Opinions of the state courts repeatedly suggest that the "reasonable grounds" prescribed by the section are understood to be synonymous with the "probable cause" demanded by the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. People v. Cohen, 42 Misc.2d 403, 404, 248 N.Y.S.2d 339, 341; People v. Grossman, 45 Misc.2d 557, 568, 257 N.Y.S.2d 266, 277; People v. Beshany, 43 Misc.2d 521, 525, 252 N.Y.S.2d 110, 115. The terms are frequently employed interchangeably, without the least suggestion of any shadings of meaning. See, e.g., People v. Rogers, 46 Misc.2d 860, 863, 261 N.Y.S.2d 152, 155; People v. McDonough, 51 Misc.2d 1065, 1069, 275 N.Y.S.2d 8, 12. Further, a lower state court [p93] has stated quite specifically that "the same standards, at the least, must be applied" to orders under § 813-a as to warrants for the search and seizure of tangible objects. People v. Cohen, supra, at 407-408, 248 N.Y.S.2d at 344. Indeed, the court went on to say that the standards "should be much more stringent than those applied to search warrants." Id. at 408, 248 N.Y.S.2d at 344. Compare Siegel v. People, 16 N.Y.2d 330, 332, 213 N.E.2d 682, 683. The court in Cohen was concerned with a wiretap order, but the order had been issued under § 813-a, and there was no suggestion there or elsewhere that eavesdropping orders should be differently treated. New York's statutory requirements for search warrants, it must be emphasized, are virtually a literal reiteration of the terms of the Fourth Amendment. N.Y.Code Crim.Proc. § 793. If the Court wished a precise invocation of the terms of the Fourth Amendment, it had only to examine the pertinent state authorities.
There is still additional evidence that the State fully recognizes the applicability to eavesdropping orders of the Fourth Amendment's constraints. The Legislature of New York adopted in 1962 comprehensive restrictions upon the use of eavesdropped information obtained without a prior § 813-a order. N.Y.Civ.Prac. § 4506. The restrictions were expected and intended to give full force to the mandate of the opinion for this Court in Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643. See 2 McKinney's Session Laws of New York 3677 (1962); New York State Legislative Annual 16 (1962). If it was then supposed that information obtained without a prior § 813-a order must, as a consequence of Mapp, be excluded from evidence, but that evidence obtained with a § 813-a order need not be excluded, it can only have been assumed that the requirements applicable to the issuance of § 813-a orders were entirely consistent with the demands of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. The legislature recognized [p94] the "hiatus" in its law created by Mapp, and wished to set its own "house . . . in order." New York State Legislative Annual, supra,at 18. It plainly understood that the Amendments were applicable, and intended to adhere fully to their requirements.
The Court has frequently observed that the Fourth Amendment's two clauses impose separate, although related, limitations upon searches and seizures; the first "is general, and forbids every search that is unreasonable," Go-Bart Co. v. United States, 282 U.S. 344, 357; the second places a number of specific constraints upon the issuance and character of warrants. It would be inappropriate and fruitless to undertake now to set the perimeters of "reasonableness" with respect to eavesdropping orders in general; any limitations, for example, necessary upon the period over which eavesdropping may be conducted, or upon the use of intercepted information unconnected with the offenses for which the eavesdropping order was first issued, should properly be developed only through a case-by-case examination of the pertinent questions. It suffices here to emphasize that, in my view, electronic eavesdropping, as such or as it is permitted by this statute, is not an unreasonable search and seizure.
The disputed recordings were made under the authority of a § 813-a order, dated June 12, 1962, permitting the installation of an eavesdropping device in the business office of one Harry Steinman; the order, in turn, was, so far as this record shows, issued solely upon the basis of information contained in affidavits submitted to the issuing judge by two assistant district attorneys. The first affidavit, signed by Assistant District Attorney Goldstein, indicated that the Rackets Bureau of the District Attorney's Office of New York County was then conducting an investigation of alleged corruption in the State Liquor Authority, and that the Bureau had received information that persons desiring to obtain or retain liquor licenses were obliged to pay large sums to officials of the Authority. It described the methods by which the bribe money was transmitted through certain attorneys to the officials. The affidavit asserted that one Harry Neyer, a former employee of the Authority, served as a "conduit." It indicated that evidence had been obtained "over a duly authorized eavesdropping device installed in the office of the aforesaid Harry Neyer," that conferences "relative to the payment of unlawful fees" occurred in Steinman's office. The number and street address of the office were provided. The affidavit specified that the "evidence indicates that the said Harry Steinman has agreed to pay, through the aforesaid Harry Neyer, $30,000" in order to secure a license for the Palladium Ballroom, an establishment [p97] within New York City. The Palladium, it was noted, had been the subject of hearings before the Authority "because of narcotic arrests therein." On the basis of this information, the affidavit sought an order to install a recording device in Steinman's business office.
Each of the first two objections depends principally upon a problem of definition: the meaning in this context of the constitutional distinction between "search" and "seizure." If listening alone completes a "seizure," it would be virtually impossible for state authorities at a probable cause hearing to describe with particularity the seizures which would later be made during extended eavesdropping; correspondingly, seizures would unavoidably be made which lacked any sufficient nexus with the [p98] offenses for which the order was first issued. Cf. Kremen v. United States, 353 U.S. 346; Warden v. Hayden, 387 U.S. 294. There is no need for present purposes to explore at length the question's subtleties; it suffices to indicate that, in my view, conversations are not "seized" either by eavesdropping alone or by their recording so that they may later be heard at the eavesdropper's convenience. Just as some exercise of dominion, beyond mere perception, is necessary for the seizure of tangibles, so some use of the conversation beyond the initial listening process is required for the seizure of the spoken word. Cf. Lopez v. United States, 373 U.S. 427, 459 (dissenting opinion); United States v. On Lee, 193 F.2d 306, 313-314 (dissenting opinion); District of Columbia v. Little, 85 U.S.App. D C. 242, 247, 178 F.2d 13, 18, affirmed on other grounds, 339 U.S. 1. With this premise, I turn to these three objections.
The "particularity" demanded by the Fourth Amendment has never been thought by this Court to be reducible "to formula"; Oklahoma Press Pub. Co. v. Walling, 327 U.S. 186, 209; it has instead been made plain that its measurement must take fully into account the character both of the materials to be seized and of the purposes of the seizures. Accordingly, where the materials "are books, and the basis for their seizure is the ideas which they contain," the most "scrupulous exactitude" is demanded in the warrant's description; Stanford v. Texas, 379 U.S. 476, 485; see also Marcus v. Search Warrant, 367 U.S. 717; but where the special problems associated with the First Amendment are not involved, as they are not here, a more "reasonable particularity," Brown v. United States, 276 U.S. 134, 143; Consolidated Rendering Co. v. Vermont, 207 U.S. 541, 554, is permissible. The degree of particularity necessary is best measured by that requirement's purposes. The central purpose of the particularity requirement is to leave "nothing . . . to the discretion of the officer executing [p99] the warrant," Marron v. United States, 275 U.S. 192, 196, by describing the materials to be seized with precision sufficient to prevent "the seizure of one thing under a warrant describing another." Ibid. The state authorities are not compelled at the probable cause hearing to wager, upon penalty of a subsequent reversal, that they can successfully predict each of the characteristics of the materials which they will later seize, cf. Consolidated Rendering Co. v. Vermont, supra, at 554; such a demand would, by discouraging the use of the judicial process, defeat the Amendment's central purpose. United States v. Ventresca, 380 U.S. 102, 108.
The materials to be seized are instead described with sufficient particularity if the warrant readily permits their identification both by those entrusted with the warrant's execution and by the court in any subsequent judicial proceeding. "It is," the Court has said with reference to the particularity of the place to be searched, "enough if the description is such that the officer . . . can with reasonable effort ascertain and identify" the warrant's objects. Steele v. United States No. 1, 267 U.S. 498, 503.
These standards must be equally applicable to the seizure of words, and, under them, this order did not lack the requisite particularity. The order here permitted the interception, or search, of any and all conversations occurring within the order's time limitations at the specified location; but this direction must be read in light of the terms of the affidavits, which, under § 813, form part of the authority for the eavesdropping. The affidavits make plain that, among the intercepted conversations, the police were authorized to seize only those "relative to the payment of unlawful fees necessary to obtain liquor licenses." These directions sufficed to provide a standard which left nothing in the choice of materials to be seized to the "whim," Stanford v. Texas, supra, at 485, of the state authorities. There could be no difficulty, [p100] either in the course of the search or in any subsequent judicial proceeding, in determining whether specific conversations were among those authorized for seizure by the order. The Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments do not demand more. Compare Kamisar, The Wiretapping-Eavesdropping Problem: A Professor's View, 44 Minn.L.Rev. 891, 913.
The question therefore remains only whether, as petitioner suggests, the order was issued without an adequate showing of probable cause. The standards for the measurement of probable cause have often been explicated in the opinions of this Court; see, e.g., United States v. Ventresca, 380 U.S. 102; its suffices now simply to emphasize that the information presented to the magistrate or commissioner must permit him to "judge for himself the persuasiveness of the facts relied on by a complaining officer." Giordenello v. United States, 357 U.S. 480, 486. The magistrate must "assess independently the probability" that the facts are as the [p101] complainant has alleged; id. at 487; he may not "accept without question the complainant's mere conclusion." Id. at 486.
As measured by the terms of the affidavits here, the issuing judge could properly have concluded that probable cause existed for the order. Unlike the situations in Nathanson v. United States, 290 U.S. 41, and Giordenello v. United States, supra, the judge was provided the evidence which supported the affiants' conclusions; he was not compelled to rely merely on their "affirmation of suspicion and belief," Nathanson v. United States, supra, at 46. Compare Rugendorf v. United States, 376 U.S. 528; Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108. In my opinion, taking the Steinman affidavits on their face, the constitutional requirements of probable cause were fully satisfied.
The threshold issue is whether petitioner has standing to challenge the validity under the Constitution of the Neyer order. Standing to challenge the constitutional validity of a search and seizure has been an issue of some difficulty and uncertainty; [n5] it has, nevertheless, hitherto been thought to hinge, not upon the use against the challenging party of evidence seized during the [p102] search, but instead upon whether the privacy of the challenging party's premises or person has been invaded. Jones v. United States, 362 U.S. 257; Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471. These cases centered upon searches conducted by federal authorities and challenged under Fed.Rule Crim.Proc. 41(e), but there is no reason now to suppose that any different standard is required by the Fourteenth Amendment for searches conducted by state officials. See generally Maguire, Evidence of Guilt 215-216 (1959).
That's right, your Honor. I am not -- I think evidence can be brought out during the trial that Berger, who Mr. Steinman, Mr. Neyer speaks to concerning the Palladium, is, in fact, the defendant Ralph Berger.
Given petitioner's standing under federal law to challenge the validity of the Neyer order, I would conclude that such order was issued without an adequate showing of probable cause. It seems quite plain, from the facts described by the State, that, at the moment the Neyer order was sought, the Rackets Bureau indeed had ample information to justify the issuance of an eavesdropping order. Nonetheless, the affidavits presented at the Neyer hearing unaccountably contained only the most conclusory allegations of suspicion. The record before us is silent on whether additional information might have been orally presented to the issuing judge. [n7] Under these circumstances, I am impelled to the view that the judge lacked sufficient information to permit him to assess the circumstances as a "neutral and detached magistrate," Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 14, and accordingly that the Neyer order was impermissible.
It does not follow, however, that evidence obtained under the Neyer order could not properly have been [p105] employed to support issuance of the Steinman order. The basic question here is the scope of the exclusionary rule fashioned in Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383, and made applicable to state proceedings in Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643. The Court determined in Weeks that the purposes of the Fourth Amendment could be fully vindicated only if materials seized in violation of its requirements were excluded from subsequent use against parties aggrieved by the seizure. Despite broader statements in certain of the cases, see, e.g., Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, 251 U.S. 385, 392, the situations for which the Weeks rule was devised, and to which it has since been applied, have uniformly involved misconduct by police or prosecutorial authorities. The rule's purposes have thus been said to be both to discourage "disobedience to the Federal Constitution," Mapp v. Ohio, supra, at 657, and to avoid any possibility that the courts themselves might be "accomplices in the willful disobedience of a Constitution they are sworn to uphold." Elkins v. United States, 364 U.S. 206, 223. The Court has cautioned that the exclusionary rule was not intended to establish supervisory jurisdiction over the administration of state criminal justice, and that the States might still fashion "workable rules governing arrests, searches and seizures." Ker v. California, 374 U.S. 23, 34.
I find nothing in the terms or purposes of the rule which demands the invalidation, under the circumstances at issue here, of the Steinman order. The state authorities appeared, as the statute requires, before a judicial official, and held themselves ready to provide information to justify the issuance of an eavesdropping order. The necessary evidence was at hand, and there was apparently no reason for the State to have preferred that it not be given to the issuing judge. The Neyer order is thus invalid simply as a consequence of the [p106] judge's willingness to act upon substantially less information than the Fourteenth Amendment obliged him to demand; correspondingly, the only "misconduct" that could be charged against the prosecution consists entirely of its failure to press additional evidence upon him. If the exclusionary rule were to be applied in this and similar situations, praiseworthy efforts of law enforcement authorities would be seriously, and quite unnecessarily, hampered; the evidence lawfully obtained under a lengthy series of valid warrants might, for example, be lost by the haste of a single magistrate. The rule applied in that manner would not encourage police officers to adhere to the requirements of the Constitution; it would simply deprive the State of evidence it has sought in accordance with those requirements.
Hoffa v. United States, 385 U.S. 293, 317 (dissenting opinion).
Silverman v. United States, 365 U.S. 505, 510.
Lopez v. United States, 373 U.S. 427, 441 (opinion concurring in result).
Two of petitioner's other contentions are plainly foreclosed by recent opinions of this Court. His contention that eavesdropping unavoidably infringes the rule forbidding the seizure of "mere evidence" is precluded by Warden v. Hayden, 387 U.S. 294. His contention that eavesdropping violates his constitutional privilege against self-incrimination is answered by Osborn v. United States, 385 U.S. 323, and Hoffa v. United States, 385 U.S. 293.
At petitioner's trial for conspiring to bribe the Chairman of the New York State Liquor Authority, the prosecution introduced tape recordings obtained through an eavesdrop of the office of Harry Steinman which had been authorized by court order pursuant to § 813-a, N.Y.Code Crim.Proc. Since Berger was rightfully in Steinman's office when his conversations were recorded through the Steinman eavesdrop, he is entitled to have those recordings excluded at his trial if they were unconstitutionally obtained. Jones v. United States, 362 U.S. 257; Silverman v. United States, 365 U.S. 505. Petitioner vigorously argues that all judicially authorized eavesdropping violates Fourth Amendment rights, but his position is unsound.
Two of petitioner's theories are easily answered. First, surreptitious electronic recording of conversations among private persons, and introduction of the recording during a criminal trial, do not violate the Fifth Amendment's ban against compulsory self-incrimination, because the conversations are not the product of any official compulsion. Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438; Hoffa v. United States, 385 U.S. 293; Osborn v. United States, 385 U.S. 323. Second, our decision in Warden v. Hayden, 387 U.S. 294, answers petitioner's contention that eavesdropping under § 813-a constitutes an unlawful search for "mere evidence"; whatever the limits of the search and seizure power may be under the Fourth Amendment, [p108] the oral evidence of a furtive bribery conspiracy sought in the application for the Steinman eavesdrop order was within the scope of proper police investigation into suspected criminal activity.
Petitioner primarily argues that eavesdropping is invalid, even pursuant to court order or search warrant, because it constitutes a "general search" barred by the Fourth Amendment. Petitioner suggests that the search is inherently overbroad because the eavesdropper will overhear conversations which do not relate to criminal activity. But the same is true of almost all searches of private property which the Fourth Amendment permits. In searching for seizable matters, the police must necessarily see or hear, and comprehend, items which do not relate to the purpose of the search. That this occurs, however, does not render the search invalid, so long as it is authorized by a suitable search warrant and so long as the police, in executing that warrant, limit themselves to searching for items which may constitutionally be seized. [n1] Thus, while I would agree with petitioner that individual searches of private property through surreptitious eavesdropping with a warrant must be carefully circumscribed to avoid excessive invasion of privacy and security, I cannot agree that all such intrusions are constitutionally impermissible general searches.
This case boils down, therefore, to the question of whether § 813-a was constitutionally applied in this case. At the outset, it is essential to note that the recordings of the Neyer office eavesdrop were not introduced at petitioner's trial, nor was petitioner present during this electronic surveillance, nor were any of petitioner's words recorded by that eavesdrop. The only links between the [p109] Neyer eavesdrop and petitioner's conviction are (a) that evidence secured from the Neyer recordings was used in the Steinman affidavits, which in turn led to the Steinman eavesdrop where petitioner's incriminating conversations were overheard, and (b) that the Neyer eavesdrop recorded what may have been [n2] the Neyer end of a telephone conversation between Neyer and Berger. In my opinion, it is clear that neither of these circumstances is enough to establish that Berger's Fourth Amendment interests were invaded by the eavesdrop in Neyer's office. Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471; Jones v. United States, 362 U.S. 257. Thus, petitioner cannot secure reversal on the basis of the allegedly unconstitutional Neyer eavesdrop.
that conferences relative to the payment of unlawful fees necessary to obtain liquor licenses occur in the office of one Harry Steinman, located in Room 801 at 15 East 48th Street, in the County, City and State of New York.
Goldstein's affidavit described with "particularity" what crime Goldstein believed was being committed; it requested authority to search one specific room; it described the principal object of the search -- Steinman and his coconspirators -- and the specific conversations [p111] which the affiant hoped to seize; it gave a precise time limit to the search, and it told the judge the manner in which the affiant had acquired his information. Petitioner argues that the reliability of the Neyer eavesdrop information was not adequately verified in the Steinman affidavit. But the Neyer eavesdrop need not be explained in detail in an application to the very judge who had authorized it just two months previously. Judge Sarafite had every reason to conclude that the Neyer eavesdrop was a reliable basis for suspecting a criminal conspiracy (consisting, as the recording did, of admissions by Steinman and other coconspirators) and that it was the source of the specific evidence recited in the Steinman affidavits.
United States v. Ventresca, 380 U.S. 102, 108. I conclude that the Steinman affidavits fully satisfied the Fourth Amendment requirements of probable cause and particularity in the issuance of search warrants.
The Court, however, seems irresistibly determined to strike down the New York statute. The majority criticizes the ex parte nature of § 813-a court orders, the lack of a requirement that "exigent circumstances" be shown, and the fact that one court order authorizes "a series or a continuous surveillance." But where are such search warrant requirements to be found in the Fourth Amendment or in any prior case construing it? The Court appears intent upon creating out of whole cloth new constitutionally mandated warrant procedures carefully tailored to make eavesdrop warrants unobtainable. That is not a judicial function. The question here is whether this search complied with Fourth Amendment standards. There is no indication in this record that the District Attorney's office seized and used conversations [p112] not described in the Goldstein affidavit, nor that officials continued the search after the time when they had gathered the evidence which they sought. Given the constitutional adequacy of the Goldstein affidavit in terms of Fourth Amendment requirements of probable cause and particularity, I conclude that both the search and seizure in Steinman's office satisfied Fourth Amendment mandates. Regardless of how the Court would like eavesdropping legislation to read, our function ends in a state case with the determination of these questions.
In so doing, the Court ignores or discounts the need for wiretapping authority, and incredibly suggests that there has been no breakdown of federal law enforcement despite the unavailability of a federal statute legalizing electronic surveillance. The Court thereby impliedly disagrees with the carefully documented reports of the Crime Commission which, contrary to the Court's intimations, underline the serious proportions of professional [p114] criminal activity in this country, the failure of current national and state efforts to eliminate it, and the need for a statute permitting carefully controlled official use of electronic surveillance, particularly in dealing with organized crime and official corruption. See Appendix A, infra; Report of the Crime Commission's Task Force on Organized Crime 17-19, 80, 91-113 (1967). How the Court can feel itself so much better qualified than the Commission, which spent months on its study, to assess the needs of law enforcement is beyond my comprehension. We have only just decided that reasonableness of a search under the Fourth Amendment must be determined by weighing the invasions of Fourth Amendment interests which wiretapping and eavesdropping entail against the public need justifying such invasions. Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U.S. 523; See v. City of Seattle, 387 U.S. 541. In these terms, it would seem imperative that the Court at least deal with facts of the real world. This the Court utterly fails to do. In my view, its opinion is wholly unresponsive to the test of reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment.
to protect the Nation against actual or potential attack or other hostile acts of a foreign power or any other serious threat to the security of the United States, or to protect national security information against foreign intelligence activities.
There are several interesting aspects to this proposed national security exemption in light of the Court's opinion. First, there is no limitation on the President's power to delegate his authority, and it seems likely that at least the Attorney General would exercise it. House Hearings at 302. Second, the national security exception would reach cases like sabotage and investigations of organizations controlled by a foreign government. For example, wiretapping to prove an individual is a member of the Communist Party, it is said, would be permissible under the statute. House Hearings at 292. Third, information from authorized surveillance in the national security area would not be admissible in evidence; to the contrary, the surveillance would apparently be for investigative and informational use only, not for [p116] use in a criminal prosecution and not authorized because of any belief or suspicion that a crime is being committed or is about to be committed. House Hearings at 289. Fourth, the Department of Justice has recommended that the Congress not await this Court's decision in the case now before us because, whether or not the Court upholds the New York statute, the power of Congress to enact the proposed legislation would not be affected. House Hearings at 308. But if electronic surveillance is a "general search," or if it must be circumscribed in the manner the Court now suggests, how can surreptitious electronic surveillance of a suspected Communist or a suspected saboteur escape the strictures of the Fourth Amendment? It seems obvious from the Department of Justice bill that the present Administration believes that there are some purposes and uses of electronic surveillance which do not involve violations of the Fourth Amendment by the Executive Branch. Such being the case, even if the views of the Executive were to be the final answer in this case, the requirements imposed by the Court to constitutionalize wiretapping and eavesdropping are a far cry from the practice anticipated under the proposed federal legislation now before the Congress.
The judicially supervised system under which we operate has worked. It has served efficiently to protect the rights liberties, property, and general welfare of the law-abiding members of our community. It has permitted us to undertake major investigations of organized crime. Without it, and I confine myself to top figures in the underworld, my own office could not have convicted Charles "Lucky" Luciano, Jimmy Hines, Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, Jacob "Gurrah" Shapiro, Joseph "Socks" Lanza, George Scalise, Frank Erickson, John "Dio" Dioguardi, and Frank Carbo. Joseph "Adonis" Doto, [p118] who was tried in New Jersey, was convicted and deported on evidence supplied by our office and obtained by assiduously following leads secured through wiretapping.
Significance to Law Enforcement. The great majority of law enforcement officials believe that the evidence necessary to bring criminal sanctions to bear consistently on the higher echelons of organized crime will not be obtained without the aid of electronic surveillance techniques. They maintain these techniques are indispensable to develop adequate strategic intelligence concerning organized crime, to set up specific investigations, to develop witnesses, to corroborate their testimony, and to serve as substitutes for them -- each a necessary step in [p123] the evidence-gathering process in organized crime investigations and prosecutions.
Members of the underworld, who have legitimate reason to fear that their meetings might be bugged or their telephones tapped, have continued to meet and to make relatively free use of the telephone -- for communication is essential to the operation of any business enterprise. In legitimate business this is accomplished with written and oral exchanges. In organized crime enterprises, however, the possibility of loss or seizure of an incriminating document demands a minimum of written communication. Because of the varied character of organized criminal enterprises, the large numbers of persons employed in them, and frequently the distances separating elements of the organization, the telephone remains an essential vehicle for communication. While discussions of business matters are held on a face-to-face basis whenever possible, they are never conducted in the presence of strangers. Thus, the content of these conversations, including the planning of new illegal activity, and transmission of policy decisions or operating instructions [p124] for existing enterprises, cannot be detected. The extreme scrutiny to which potential members are subjected and the necessity for them to engage in criminal activity have precluded law enforcement infiltration of organized crime groups.
the single most valuable weapon in law enforcement's fight against organized crime . . . It has permitted us to undertake major investigations of organized crime. Without it, and I confine myself to top figures in the underworld, my own office could not have convicted Charles "Lucky" Luciano, Jimmy Hines, Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, Jacob "Gurrah" Shapiro, Joseph "Socks" Lanza, George Scalise, Frank Erickson, John "Dio" Dioguardi, and Frank Carbo. . . .
Over the years, New York has faced one of the Nation's most aggravated organized crime problems. Only in New York have law enforcement officials achieved some level of continuous success in bringing prosecutions against organized crime. For over 20 years, New York has authorized wiretapping on court order. Since 1957, bugging has been similarly authorized. Wiretapping was the mainstay of the New York attack against organized crime until Federal court decisions intervened. Recently, chief reliance in some offices has been placed on bugging, where the information is to be used in court. Law enforcement officials believe that the successes achieved in some parts of the State are attributable primarily to a combination of dedicated and competent personnel and adequate legal tools, and that the failure to do more in New York has resulted primarily from the failure to commit additional resources of time and men. The [p125] debilitating effect of corruption, political influence, and incompetence, underscored by the New York State Commission of Investigation, must also be noted.
Today, in addition to some law enforcement agents, numerous private persons are utilizing these techniques. They are employed to acquire evidence for domestic relations cases, to carry on industrial espionage and counterespionage, to assist in preparing for civil litigation, and for personnel investigations, among others. Technological advances have produced remarkably sophisticated devices, of which the electronic cocktail olive is illustrative, and continuing price reductions have expanded their markets. Nor has man's ingenuity in the development of surveillance equipment been exhausted with the design [p126] and manufacture of electronic devices for wiretapping or for eavesdropping within buildings or vehicles. Parabolic microphones that pick up conversations held in the open at distances of hundreds of feet are available commercially, and some progress has been made toward utilizing the laser beam to pick up conversations within a room by focusing upon the glass of a convenient window. Progress in microminiaturizing electronic components has resulted in the production of equipment of extremely small size. Because it can detect what is said anywhere -- not just on the telephone -- bugging presents especially serious threats to privacy.
Present Law and Practice. In 1928, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that evidence obtained by wiretapping a defendant's telephone at a point outside the defendant's premises was admissible in a Federal criminal prosecution. The Court found no unconstitutional search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment. Enactment of Section 605 of the Federal Communications Act in 1934 [p127] precluded interception and disclosure of wire communications. The Department of Justice has interpreted this section to permit interception so long as no disclosure of the content outside the Department is made. Thus, wiretapping may presently be conducted by a Federal agent, but the results may not be used in court. When police officers wiretap and disclose the information obtained, in accordance with State procedure, they are in violation of Federal law.
Law enforcement experience with bugging has been much more recent and more limited than the use of the traditional wiretap. The legal situation with respect to bugging is also different. The regulation of the national telephone communication network falls within recognized national powers, while legislation attempting to authorize the placing of electronic equipment even under a warrant system would break new and uncharted ground. At the present time, there is no Federal legislation explicitly dealing with bugging. Since the decision of the Supreme Court in Silverman v. United States, 365 U.S. 505 (1961), use of bugging equipment that involves an unauthorized physical entry into a constitutionally protected private area violates the Fourth Amendment, and evidence thus obtained is inadmissible. If eavesdropping is unaccompanied by such a trespass, or if the communication is recorded with the consent of one of the parties, no such prohibition applies.
The confusion that has arisen inhibits cooperation between State and Federal law enforcement agencies because of the fear that information secured in one investigation will legally pollute another. For example, in New York City prosecutors refuse to divulge the contents of wire communications intercepted pursuant to State court orders because of the Federal proscription, but do utilize evidence obtained by bugging pursuant [p128] to court order. In other sections of New York State, however, prosecutors continue to introduce both wiretapping and eavesdropping evidence at trial.
All members of the Commission believe that, if authority to employ these techniques is granted, it must be granted only with stringent limitations. One form of detailed regulatory statute that has been suggested to [p129] the Commission is outlined in the appendix to the Commission's organized crime task force volume. All private use of electronic surveillance should be placed under rigid control, or it should be outlawed.
In the course of some of these conversations [recorded by the Neyer eavesdrop], we have one-half of a telephone call, of several telephone calls between Mr. Neyer and a person he refers to on the telephone as Mr. Berger, and in the conversation with Mr. Berger, Mr. Neyer discusses also the obtaining of a liquor license for the Palladium and mentions the fact that this is going to be a big one.
All available data indicate that organized crime flourishes only where it has corrupted local officials. As the scope and variety of organized crime's activities have expanded, its need to involve public officials at every level of local government has grown. And as government regulation expands into more and more areas of private and business activity, the power to corrupt likewise affords the corrupter more control over matters affecting the everyday life of each citizen.
Frank R. SCOTT et al. v. UNITED STATES.
Bentley Andrew DYE v. NEW JERSEY.
UNIFORMED SANITATION MEN ASSOCIATION, Inc., et al., Petitioners, v. COMMISSIONER OF SANITATION OF the CITY OF NEW YORK et al.

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