Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/468/705/
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 05:57:40+00:00

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After a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent learned that respondents Karo, Horton, and Harley had ordered 50 gallons of ether from a Government informant, who had told the agent that the ether was to be used to extract cocaine from clothing that had been imported into the United States, the Government obtained a court order authorizing the installation and monitoring of a beeper in one of the cans of ether. With the informant's consent, DEA agents substituted their own can containing a beeper for one of the cans in the shipment. Thereafter, agents saw Karo pick up the ether from the informant, followed Karo to his house, and determined by using the beeper that the ether was inside the house, where it was then monitored. The ether then moved in succession to two other houses, including Horton's, before it was moved first to a locker in one commercial storage facility and then to a locker in another such facility. Both lockers were rented jointly by Horton and Harley. Finally, the ether was removed from the second storage facility by respondent Rhodes and an unidentified woman and transported in Horton's truck, first to Rhodes' house and then to a house rented by Horton, Harley, and respondent Steele. Using the beeper monitor, agents determined that the beeper can was inside the house, and obtained a warrant to search the house based in part on information derived through use of the beeper. The warrant was executed, and Horton, Harley, Steele, and respondent Roth were arrested, and cocaine was seized. Respondents were indicted for various offenses relating to the cocaine. The District Court granted respondents' pretrial motion to suppress the seized evidence on the grounds that the initial warrant to install the beeper was invalid, and that the seizure was the tainted fruit of an unauthorized installation and monitoring of the beeper. The Government appealed, but did not challenge the invalidation of the initial warrant. The Court of Appeals affirmed, except with respect to Rhodes, holding that a warrant was required to install the beeper in the can of ether and to monitor it in private dwellings and storage lockers, that the warrant for the search of the house rented by Horton, Harley, and Steele, and the resulting seizure, were tainted by the Government's prior illegal conduct, and that therefore the evidence was properly suppressed as to Horton, Harley, Steele, Roth, and Karo.
1. No Fourth Amendment interest of Karo or of any other respondent was infringed by the installation of the beeper. The informant's consent was sufficient to validate the installation. And the transfer of the beeper-laden can to Karo was neither a search nor a seizure, since it conveyed no information that Karo wished to keep private and did not interfere with anyone's possessory interest in a meaningful way. Pp. 468 U. S. 711-713.
2. The monitoring of a beeper in a private residence, a location not opened to visual surveillance, violates the Fourth Amendment rights of those who have a justifiable interest in the privacy of the residence. Here, if a DEA agent had entered the house in question without a warrant to verify that the ether was in the house, he would have engaged in an unreasonable search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. The result is the same where, without a warrant, the Government surreptitiously uses a beeper to obtain information that it could not have obtained from outside the curtilage of the house. There is no reason in this case to deviate from the general rule that a search of a house should be conducted pursuant to a warrant. Pp. 468 U. S. 713-718.
3. The evidence seized in the house in question, however, should not have been suppressed with respect to any of the respondents. The information that the ether was in the house, verified by use of the beeper without a warrant, would be inadmissible against those respondents with privacy interests in the house, and would invalidate the search warrant, if critical to establishing probable cause. But because locating, without prior monitoring, the ether in the second storage facility was not an illegal search (use of the beeper not identifying the specific locker in which the ether was located and the locker being identified only by the smell of ether emanating therefrom), and because the ether was seen being loaded into Horton's truck, which then traveled the highways, it is evident that there was no violation of the Fourth Amendment as to anyone with or without standing to complain about monitoring the beeper while it was located in the truck. United States v. Knotts, 460 U. S. 276. Under the circumstances, the warrant affidavit, after striking the facts about monitoring the beeper while it was in the searched house, contained sufficient untainted information to furnish probable cause for issuance of the search warrant. Pp. 468 U. S. 719-721.
REHNQUIST, J., joined, post, p. 468 U. S. 721. STEVENS, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, in which BRENNAN and MARSHALL, JJ., joined, post, p. 468 U. S. 728.
In United States v. Knotts, 460 U. S. 276 (1983), we held that the warrantless monitoring of an electronic tracking device ("beeper") [Footnote 1] inside a container of chemicals did not violate the Fourth Amendment when it revealed no information that could not have been obtained through visual surveillance. In this case, we are called upon to address two questions left unresolved in Knotts: (1) whether installation of a beeper in a container of chemicals with the consent of the original owner constitutes a search or seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment when the container is delivered to a buyer having no knowledge of the presence of the beeper, and (2) whether monitoring of a beeper falls within the ambit of the Fourth Amendment when it reveals information that could not have been obtained through visual surveillance.
In August, 1980, Agent Rottinger of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) learned that respondents James Karo, Richard Horton, and William Harley had ordered 50 gallons of ether from Government informant Carl Muehlenweg of Graphic Photo Design in Albuquerque, N.M. Muehlenweg told Rottinger that the ether was to be used to extract cocaine from clothing that had been imported into the United States. The Government obtained a court order authorizing the installation and monitoring of a beeper in one of the cans of ether. With Muehlenweg's consent, agents substituted their own can containing a beeper for one of the cans in the shipment, and then had all 10 cans painted to give them a uniform appearance.
On September 20, 1980, agents saw Karo pick up the ether from Muehlenweg. They then followed Karo to his house, using visual and beeper surveillance. At one point later that day, agents determined by using the beeper that the ether was still inside the house, but they later determined that it had been moved undetected to Horton's house, where they located it using the beeper. Agent Rottinger could smell the ether from the public sidewalk near Horton's residence. Two days later, agents discovered that the ether had once again been moved, and, using the beeper, they located it at the residence of Horton's father. The next day, the beeper was no longer transmitting from Horton's father's house, and agents traced the beeper to a commercial storage facility.
jamb of the locker so they would be able to tell when the door was opened. While installing the alarm, agents observed that the cans containing ether were still inside. Agents ceased visual and beeper surveillance, relying instead on the entry tone alarm. However, on October 16, Horton retrieved the contents from the locker without sounding the alarm. Agents did not learn of the entry until the manager of the storage facility notified them that Horton had been there.
Using the beeper, agents traced the beeper can to another self-storage facility three days later. Agents detected the smell of ether coming from locker 15, and learned from the manager that Horton and Harley had rented that locker using an alias the same day that the ether had been removed from the first storage facility. The agents obtained an order authorizing the installation of an entry tone alarm in locker 15, but instead of installing that alarm, they obtained consent from the manager of the facility to install a closed-circuit video camera in a locker that had a view of locker 15. On February 6, 1981, agents observed, by means of the video camera, Gene Rhodes and an unidentified woman removing the cans from the locker and loading them onto the rear bed of Horton's pickup truck. Using both visual and beeper surveillance, agents tracked the truck to Rhodes' residence where it was parked in the driveway. Agents then observed Rhodes and a woman bringing boxes and other items from inside the house and loading the items into the trunk of an automobile. Agents did not see any cans being transferred from the pickup.
determined, using the beeper monitor, that the beeper can was still inside the house. Again on February 7, the beeper revealed that the ether can was still on the premises. At one point, agents noticed that the windows of the house were wide open on a cold windy day, leading them to suspect that the ether was being used. On February 8, the agents applied for and obtained a warrant to search the Taos residence based in part on information derived through use of the beeper. The warrant was executed on February 10, 1981, and Horton, Harley, Steele, and Evan Roth were arrested, and cocaine and laboratory equipment were seized.
granted the Government's petition for certiorari, 464 U.S. 1068 (1984), which raised the question whether a warrant was required to authorize either the installation of the beeper or its subsequent monitoring. We deal with each contention in turn.
Because the judgment below in favor of Karo rested in major part on the conclusion that the installation violated his Fourth Amendment rights and that any information obtained from monitoring the beeper was tainted by the initial illegality, we must deal with the legality of the warrantless installation. It is clear that the actual placement of the beeper into the can violated no one's Fourth Amendment rights. The can into which the beeper was placed belonged at the time to the DEA, and by no stretch of the imagination could it be said that respondents then had any legitimate expectation of privacy in it. The ether and the original 10 cans, on the other hand, belonged to, and were in the possession of, Muehlenweg, who had given his consent to any invasion of those items that occurred. Thus, even if there had been no substitution of cans and the agents had placed the beeper into one of the original 10 cans, Muehlenweg's consent was sufficient to validate the placement of the beeper in the can. See United States v. Matlock, 415 U. S. 164 (1974); Frazier v. Cupp, 394 U. S. 731 (1969).
"All individuals have a legitimate expectation of privacy that objects coming into their rightful ownership do not have electronic devices attached to them, devices that would give law enforcement agents the opportunity to monitor the location of the objects at all times and in every place that the objects are taken, including inside private residences and other areas where the right to be free from warrantless governmental intrusion is unquestioned."
Not surprisingly, the Court of Appeals did not describe the transfer as either a "search" or a "seizure," for plainly it is neither. A "search" occurs "when an expectation of privacy that society is prepared to consider reasonable is infringed." United States v. Jacobsen, 466 U. S. 109, 466 U. S. 113 (1984). The mere transfer to Karo of a can containing an unmonitored beeper infringed no privacy interest. It conveyed no information that Karo wished to keep private, for it conveyed no information at all. To be sure, it created a potential for an invasion of privacy, but we have never held that potential, as opposed to actual, invasions of privacy constitute searches for purposes of the Fourth Amendment. A holding to that effect would mean that a policeman walking down the street carrying a parabolic microphone capable of picking up conversations in nearby homes would be engaging in a search even if the microphone were not turned on. It is the exploitation of technological advances that implicates the Fourth Amendment, not their mere existence.
marginally relevant to the question of whether the Fourth Amendment has been violated, however, for an actual trespass is neither necessary nor sufficient to establish a constitutional violation. Compare Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347 (1967) (no trespass, but Fourth Amendment violation), with Oliver v. United States, 466 U. S. 170 (1984) (trespass, but no Fourth Amendment violation). Of course, if the presence of a beeper in the can constituted a seizure merely because of its occupation of space, it would follow that the presence of any object, regardless of its nature, would violate the Fourth Amendment.
cabin could have been observed by the naked eye, no Fourth Amendment violation was committed by monitoring the beeper during the trip to the cabin. In Knotts, the record did not show that the beeper was monitored while the can containing it was inside the cabin, and we therefore had no occasion to consider whether a constitutional violation would have occurred had the fact been otherwise.
"For fear of detection, we did not maintain tight surveillance of the residence. . . . Using the 'beeper' locator, I positively determined that the 'beeper' can (5-gallon can of ether, described earlier in this affidavit) was now inside the above-described premises to be searched because the 'beeper' locator (direction finder) pinpointed the beeper signal as emanating from the above-described premises. . . . Again, later on Saturday (now in the daytime), 7 February 1981, my 'beeper' locator still shows a strong 'beeper' signal emanating from inside the above-described residence."
App. 57-58. This case thus presents the question whether the monitoring of a beeper in a private residence, a location not open to visual surveillance, violates the Fourth Amendment rights of those who have a justifiable interest in the privacy of the residence. Contrary to the submission of the United States, we think that it does.
seizures inside a home without a warrant are presumptively unreasonable absent exigent circumstances. Welsh v. Wisconsin, 466 U. S. 740, 466 U. S. 748-749 (1984); Steagald v. United States, 451 U. S. 204, 451 U. S. 211-212 (1981); Payton v. New York, 445 U. S. 573, 445 U. S. 586 (1980). In this case, had a DEA agent thought it useful to enter the Taos residence to verify that the ether was actually in the house, and had he done so surreptitiously and without a warrant, there is little doubt that he would have engaged in an unreasonable search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. For purposes of the Amendment, the result is the same where, without a warrant, the Government surreptitiously employs an electronic device to obtain information that it could not have obtained by observation from outside the curtilage of the house. The beeper tells the agent that a particular article is actually located at a particular time in the private residence and is in the possession of the person or persons whose residence is being watched. Even if visual surveillance has revealed that the article to which the beeper is attached has entered the house, the later monitoring not only verifies the officers' observations but also establishes that the article remains on the premises. Here, for example, the beeper was monitored for a significant period after the arrival of the ether in Taos and before the application for a warrant to search.
The monitoring of an electronic device such as a beeper is, of course, less intrusive than a full-scale search, but it does reveal a critical fact about the interior of the premises that the Government is extremely interested in knowing and that it could not have otherwise obtained without a warrant. The case is thus not like Knotts, for there the beeper told the authorities nothing about the interior of Knotts' cabin. The information obtained in Knotts was "voluntarily conveyed to anyone who wanted to look . . . ," 460 U.S. at 460 U. S. 281; here, as we have said, the monitoring indicated that the beeper was inside the house, a fact that could not have been visually verified.
are no exceptions to the warrant rule, because if truly exigent circumstances exist, no warrant is required under general Fourth Amendment principles.
As we have said, by maintaining the beeper, the agents verified that the ether was actually located in the Taos house and that it remained there while the warrant was sought. This information was obtained without a warrant, and would therefore be inadmissible at trial against those with privacy interests in the house -- Horton, Harley, Steele, and Roth. That information, which was included in the warrant affidavit, would also invalidate the warrant for the search of the house if it proved to be critical to establishing probable cause for the issuance of the warrant. However, if sufficient untainted evidence was presented in the warrant affidavit to establish probable cause, the warrant was nevertheless valid. Franks v. Delaware, 438 U. S. 154, 438 U. S. 172 (1978).
present record reveals, two of the four respondents who had standing to object to the search of the residence -- Steele and Roth -- had no interest in any of the arguably private places in which the beeper was monitored prior to its arrival in Taos. The evidence seized in the house would be admissible against them.
The question as to Horton and Harley is somewhat more complicated. On the initial leg of its journey, the ether came to rest in Karo's house, where it was monitored; it then moved in succession to two other houses, including Horton's, before it was moved first to a locker in one public warehouse and then to a locker in another. Both lockers were rented jointly by Horton and Harley. On September 6, the ether was removed from the second storage facility and transported to Taos.
when agents traversing the public parts of the facility found that the smell of ether was coming from a specific locker.
"A beeper is a radio transmitter, usually battery-operated, which emits periodic signals that can be picked up by a radio receiver."
United States v. Knotts, 460 U.S. at 460 U. S. 277.
The Court of Appeals reversed as to Rhodes, since he had not shown that the beeper had been located in any place in which he had a reasonable expectation of privacy, nor had he shown any possessory interest in the ether itself that would have been invaded by the installation of the beeper.
Despite this holding, warrants for the installation and monitoring of a beeper will obviously be desirable, since it may be useful, even critical, to monitor the beeper to determine that it is actually located in a place not open to visual surveillance. As will be evident below, such monitoring without a warrant may violate the Fourth Amendment.
JUSTICE O'CONNOR observes that a homeowner has no reasonable expectation that a person invited into his home will not be wired with a microphone that transmits conversations in which he engages, see United States v. White, 401 U. S. 745 (1971), and from this proposition she concludes that a homeowner has no reasonable expectation that an invitee will not bring an object containing a beeper into his home. Post at 468 U. S. 722-724. While that observation would be relevant if one of the conspirators in this case had consented to the placement of the beeper in the can, it has no relevance to the case at hand. Surely if the Government surreptitiously plants a listening device on an unsuspecting household guest or family member and then monitors conversations with the homeowner, the homeowner could challenge the monitoring of the conversations regardless of the fact that he did not have power "to give effective consent to the search" of the visitor. Post at 468 U. S. 724. As the plurality recognized in United States v. White, supra, at 401 U. S. 749, there is a substantial distinction between "revelation[s] to the Government by a party to conversations with the defendant" and eavesdropping on conversations without the knowledge or consent of either party to it. A homeowner takes the risk that his guest will cooperate with the Government, but not the risk that a trustworthy friend has been bugged by the Government without his knowledge or consent. Under JUSTICE O'CONNOR's view, it could easily be said that, in Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347 (1967), Katz had no reasonable expectation of privacy in his conversation, because the person to whom he was speaking might have divulged the contents of the conversation. There would be nothing left of the Fourth Amendment right to privacy if anything that a hypothetical government informant might reveal is stripped of constitutional protection.
Rawlings v. Kentucky, 448 U. S. 98 (1980), is simply inapposite, since it was not Rawlings' home in which the challenged search occurred. Cf. Alderman v. United States, 394 U. S. 165 (1969) (homeowner has standing to challenge illegal search of house even if he has no interest in the property seized). JUSTICE O'CONNOR seems to recognize as much, noting in the discussion of Katz, post at 468 U. S. 725, that "a third person, who never used a particular telephone line" would have no standing to challenge illegal eavesdropping. If the phone line is that of the third person, however, a different analysis is involved.
The United States insists that, if beeper monitoring is deemed a search, a showing of reasonable suspicion, rather than probable cause, should suffice for its execution. That issue, however, is not before us. The initial warrant was not invalidated for want of probable cause, which plainly existed, but for misleading statements in the affidavit. The Government did not appeal the invalidation of the warrant, and, as the case has turned out, the Government prevails without a warrant authorizing installation. It will be time enough to resolve the probable cause-reasonable suspicion issue in a case that requires it.
Had the monitoring disclosed the presence of the container within a particular locker, the result would be otherwise, for surely Horton and Harley had a reasonable expectation of privacy in their own storage locker.
Although the unwarranted monitoring of the beeper in Karo's house would foreclose using that evidence against him, it did not taint the discovery of the ether in the second warehouse and the ensuing surveillance of the trip to Taos.
implicates no Fourth Amendment concerns. The subsequent transfer of the container, with the unactivated beeper, to one who is unaware of the beeper's presence is also unobjectionable. It is when the beeper is activated to track the movements of the container that privacy interests are implicated.
In my view, however, these privacy interests are unusually narrow -- narrower than is suggested by the Court in 468 U. S. If the container is moved on the public highways, or in other places where the container's owner has no reasonable expectation that its movements will not be tracked without his consent, activation of the beeper infringes on no reasonable expectation of privacy. United States v. Knotts, 460 U. S. 276 (1983). In this situation, the location of the container defeats any expectation that its movements will not be tracked.
In addition, one who lacks ownership of the container itself or the power to move the container at will can have no reasonable expectation that the movements of the container will not be tracked by a beeper within the container, regardless of where the container is moved. In this situation, the absence of an appropriate interest in the container itself defeats any expectation of privacy in the movements of the container, even when the container is brought into places where others may have a privacy interest. Cf. Rawlings v. Kentucky, 448 U. S. 98 (1980); United States v. White, 401 U. S. 745 (1971); Lopez v. United States, 373 U. S. 427 (1963).
for something more before concluding that monitoring of a beeper in a closed container that is brought into a home violates the homeowner's reasonable expectations of privacy.
First, the test proposed by the Court seems squarely inconsistent with Rawlings v. Kentucky, supra. In Rawlings, this Court approved the admission of drugs seized from a woman's purse because her male companion did not prove that he had a legitimate expectation of privacy in the purse. Indeed, the male companion lacked standing to challenge the search, even though he claimed ownership of the drugs found in the purse. Had the purse contained a beeper that for some reason was itself evidence of a crime, only the owner of the purse, not her companion, could have objected to the admission of the beeper itself as evidence. A search of a closed container that occurs without the consent of the container's owner does not give to every defendant a right to suppress incriminating evidence found in the container.
The Court's test for when monitoring a beeper inside a guest's closed and private container violates a homeowner's expectations of privacy is, moreover, difficult to reconcile with United States v. Matlock, 415 U. S. 164 (1974), and many other similar decisions that address expectations of privacy in closed containers. A homeowner who entirely lacks access to or control over a guest's closed container would presumably lack the power to consent to its search under the standards articulated by this Court in United States v.
Matlock, supra. But surely a homeowner cannot simultaneously have so little interest in a container that his consent to its search is constitutionally ineffective and have so great an interest in the container that its search violates his constitutional rights. Standing to object to the search of a container, and power to give effective consent to the search, should go hand in hand.
My reasons for preferring this approach require some elaboration. The principles for assessing a single person's privacy interests in a particular place, location, or transmission system such as a telephone line, are reasonably well settled. The Court relies on these principles -- particularly on the strong presumption of privacy in the home -- to analyze the beeper case presented here. But the movement of a guest's closed container into another's home involves overlapping privacy interests. When privacy interests in particular locations are shared by several persons, assessing expectations of privacy requires a more probing analysis.
A privacy interest in a home itself need not be coextensive with a privacy interest in the contents or movements of everything situated inside the home. This has been recognized before in connection with third-party consent to searches. A homeowner's consent to a search of the home may not be effective consent to a search of a closed object inside the home. Consent to search a container or a place is effective only when given by one with "common authority over or other sufficient relationship to the premises or effects sought to be inspected." United States v. Matlock, 415 U.S. at 415 U. S. 171.
"Common authority . . . rests . . . on mutual use of the property by persons generally having joint access or control for most purposes. . . ."
Id. at 415 U. S. 171, n. 7.
Another relatively easy case arises when two persons share identical, overlapping privacy interests in a particular place, container, or conversation. Here both share the power to surrender each other's privacy to a third party. Persons who share access to closed containers also share the power to consent to a search; only if neither consents do both retain the right to object to the fruits of an unlawful search. Similarly, two people who speak face to face in a private place or on a private telephone line both may share an expectation that the conversation will remain private, Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347 (1967), but either may give effective consent to a wiretap or other electronic surveillance, United States v. White, 401 U. S. 745 (1971). One might say that the telephone line, or simply the space that separates two persons in conversation, is their jointly owned "container." Each has standing to challenge the use as evidence of the fruits of an unauthorized search of that "container," but either may also give effective consent to the search.
interest in the container, even if the information were transmitted from inside the home.
The beeper in this case, however, transmitted information about the location, not the contents, of the container. Conceivably, location in a home is an attribute partly of the home and partly of the container itself. But the primary privacy interest is not the homeowner's. By giving consent to another to move a closed container into and out of the home, the homeowner has effectively surrendered his privacy insofar as the location of the container may be concerned, or so we should assume absent evidence to the contrary. In other words, one who lacks dominion and control over the object's location has no privacy interest invaded when that information is disclosed. It is simply not his secret that the beeper is disclosing, just as it is not his privacy that would be invaded by a search of the container whose contents he did not control.
power has no legitimate expectation of privacy in the movements of the container.
For the reasons stated in 468 U. S. I agree that the decision below must be reversed.
If a container is moved into a home without permission, the homeowner, of course, retains a legitimate expectation that the container will not enter into his home, and a fortiori a legitimate expectation that knowledge of the container's location inside his home will not be broadcast to the world outside.
But see 18 U.S.C. § 2515 (broader standing rules to suppress wiretap evidence set by statute).
The beeper is a species of radio transmitter. Mounted inside a container, it has much in common with a microphone mounted on a person. It reveals the location of the item to which it is attached -- the functional equivalent of a radio transmission saying "Now I am at _____."
"protects two kinds of expectations, one involving 'searches,' the other 'seizures.' A 'search' occurs when an expectation of privacy that society is prepared to consider reasonable is infringed. A 'seizure' of property occurs when there is some meaningful interference with an individual's possessory interests in that property."
because my understanding of the Fourth Amendment, as well as my understanding of the issues that have been framed for us by the parties to this case, leads me to a different result than that reached by the Court.
The attachment of the beeper, in my judgment, constituted a "seizure." [Footnote 3/1] The owner of property, of course, has a right to exclude from it all the world, including the Government, and a concomitant right to use it exclusively for his own purposes. When the Government attaches an electronic monitoring device to that property, it infringes that exclusionary right; in a fundamental sense, it has converted the property to its own use. Surely such an invasion is an "interference" with possessory rights; the right to exclude, which attached as soon as the can respondents purchased was delivered, had been infringed. [Footnote 3/2] That interference is also "meaningful"; the character of the property is profoundly different when infected with an electronic bug than when it is entirely germ-free.
"[T]he officers overheard the petitioners' conversations only by usurping part of the petitioners' house or office -- a heating system which was an integral part of the premises occupied by the petitioners, a usurpation that was effected without their knowledge and without their consent. In these circumstances, we need not pause to consider whether or not there was a technical trespass under the local property law relating to party walls. Inherent Fourth Amendment rights are not inevitably measurable in terms of ancient niceties of tort or real property law."
Id. at 365 U. S. 511 (footnote omitted).
The Court has developed a relatively straightforward test for determining what expectations of privacy are protected by the Fourth Amendment with respect to the possession of personal property. If personal property is in the plain view of the public, the possession of the property is in no sense "private," and hence is unprotected: "What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection." Katz v.
United States, 389 U. S. 347, 389 U. S. 351 (1967). [Footnote 3/4] When a person's property is concealed from public view, however, then the fact of his possession is private, and the subject of Fourth Amendment protection.
"One point on which the Court was in virtually unanimous agreement in Robbins [v. California, 453 U. S. 420 (1981)] was that a constitutional distinction between 'worthy' and 'unworthy' containers would be improper. . . . [T]he central purpose of the Fourth Amendment forecloses such a distinction. For just as the most frail cottage in the kingdom is absolutely entitled to the same guarantees of privacy as the most majestic mansion, so also may a traveler who carries a toothbrush and a few articles of clothing in a paper bag or knotted scarf claim an equal right to conceal his possessions from official inspection as the sophisticated executive with the locked attache case."
"A person traveling in an automobile on public throroughfares has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements from one place to another."
the homeowner should not obscure the independent interest of those in possession of property that is monitored through the use of a beeper while the property is in a home or in any other location in which it is concealed from public view.
In this case, the beeper enabled the agents to learn facts that were not exposed to public view. In Knotts, the agents already saw the codefendant take possession of chloroform, and therefore the beeper accomplished no more than following the codefendant without the aid of the beeper would have. Here, once the container went into Karo's house, the agents thereafter learned who had the container and where it was only through use of the beeper. The beeper alone told them when the container was taken into private residences and storage areas, and when it was transported from one place to another.
"Indiscriminate monitoring of property that has been withdrawn from public view would present far too serious a threat to privacy interests in the home to escape entirely some sort of Fourth Amendment oversight."
property not exposed to public view, it invaded an interest embraced in the Fourth Amendment's conception of a "search."
The impact of beeper surveillance upon interests protected by the Fourth Amendment leads me to what I regard as the perfectly sensible conclusion that, absent exigent circumstances, Government agents have a constitutional duty to obtain a warrant before they install an electronic device on a private citizen's property.
Because the Government does not challenge the conclusion that the warrant purporting to authorize the installation of the beeper was obtained improperly, I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals. I would not engage in a de novo examination of the record in an effort to determine whether there is sufficient information independent of that obtained by means of the beeper to support the issuance of the warrant to search the Taos house. That question was not raised in the petition for certiorari, and has not been briefed by the parties. [Footnote 3/12] Surely this is an inquiry that should be made in the first instance by the trial court after the parties have had an opportunity to argue the issue.
The seizure issue was not decided in United States v. Knotts, 460 U. S. 276 (1983); there, Knotts did not challenge the installation of the beeper or its impact on his possessory rights. See id. at 460 U. S. 279, n.; see also id. at 460 U. S. 286 (BRENNAN, J., concurring in judgment); id. at 460 U. S. 288 (STEVENS, J., concurring in judgment).
It makes no difference in this case that, when the beeper was initially attached, the can had not yet been delivered to respondents. Once the delivery had been effected, the container was respondents' property, from which they had the right to exclude all the world. It was at that point that the infringement of this constitutionally protected interest began.
It follows that those with possessory interests in the can to which the beeper was attached have standing to challenge the seizure, and that the "seizure" tainted all of the beeper surveillance in this case.
See Smith v. Maryland, 442 U. S. 735, 442 U. S. 744-746 (1979); United States v. Miller, 425 U. S. 435, 425 U. S. 442 (1976); United States v. Dionisio, 410 U. S. 1, 410 U. S. 14 (1973).
See United States v. Jacobsen, 466 U. S. 109, 466 U. S. 129 (1984) (WHITE, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment); Illinois v. Andreas, 463 U. S. 765, 463 U. S. 768, 771 (1983); Robbins v. California, 453 U. S. 420, 453 U. S. 426-427 (1981) (plurality opinion); Arkansas v. Sanders, 442 U. S. 753, 442 U. S. 764-765 (1979); United States v. Chadwick, 433 U. S. 1, 433 U. S. 13, and n. 8 (1977). See also Jacobsen, 466 U.S. at 466 U. S. 120, n. 17.
"A police car following Petschen at a distance throughout his journey could have observed him leaving the public highway and arriving at the cabin owned by respondent, with the drum of chloroform still in the car. This fact, along with others, was used by the government in obtaining a search warrant which led to the discovery of the clandestine drug laboratory. But there is no indication that the beeper was used in any way to reveal information as to the movement of the drum within the cabin, or in any way that would not have been visible to the naked eye from outside the cabin."
460 U.S. at 460 U. S. 285. See also ante at 468 U. S. 713-714.
"If the police make an unwarranted search of a house and seize tangible property belonging to third parties -- even a transcript of a third-party conversation -- the homeowner may object to its use against him, not because he had any interest in the seized items as 'effects' protected by the Fourth Amendment, but because they were the fruits of an unauthorized search of his house, which is itself expressly protected by the Fourth Amendment."
394 U.S. at 394 U. S. 176-177 (footnote omitted).
The Court seems to acknowledge as much, since it indicates that the location of property can be private even when not in a home. See ante at 468 U. S. 720, n. 6. And even if it is assumed that a beeper infringes privacy interests only with respect to the location of items concealed within a home, the "search" that the Court concludes began when the can containing the beeper went into Karo's home did not end when it left the home. When the agents monitored the beeper at a later point and learned that the can was no longer in the home, the invasion of the privacy of Karo's home continued; by learning that the can was no longer in the home, the monitoring told the agents something they otherwise would not have known about what was in Karo's home. If monitoring of a beeper constitutes a search because it "establishes that the article remains on the premises," ante at 468 U. S. 715, it is no less a search when it establishes that the article has left the premises. For this reason, the Court's holding in 468 U. S. The later monitoring necessarily told police that the container had left areas the Court considers protected, and therefore itself violated privacy rights.
It follows that I believe JUSTICE O'CONNOR's criteria are sufficient to accord an accused standing to challenge beeper surveillance -- if that person had the power to prevent visual surveillance of the container, and hence a reasonable expectation that the location of the property would remain private, he can challenge beeper surveillance of the container. Ante at 468 U. S. 727-728. Since it is the location of the property that is concealed from public view, and hence private, those who have concealed the items are the persons whose privacy has been invaded if the property was concealed in a place where they could reasonably expect its location would remain private. See United States v. Salvucci, 448 U. S. 83, 448 U. S. 91-93 (1980).
The Court states: "The mere transfer to Karo of a can containing an unmonitored beeper infringed no privacy interest." Ante at 468 U. S. 712. Presumably the Court would also conclude that no privacy interest would be infringed by the entrance of a blindfolded plumber.
It follows that I disagree with the Court's conclusion that the monitoring of the beeper that revealed it was in the second warehouse did not constitute a search. Ante at 468 U. S. 720-721. The property was concealed from public view; its location was a secret, and hence, by revealing its location, the beeper infringed an expectation of privacy. Without the beeper, the agents would have never found the warehouse, and hence would have never set up visual surveillance of the locker containing the can of ether.
"1. Whether warrantless installation of a beeper inside a container of chemicals with the consent of the original owner violates the Fourth Amendment rights of a suspect in a drug manufacturing scheme to whom the container is subsequently transferred."
"2. Whether the warrantless monitoring of signals from a beeper installed inside a container of chemicals that law enforcement authorities reasonably believe will be used to manufacture illegal drugs violates the Fourth Amendment when the monitoring occurs while the beeper is located within a home or other 'private' area (such as a commercial storage locker)."
I fail to see how the discussion in 468 U. S. To the contrary, it appears that the Court has concluded that the Court of Appeals answered both of these questions correctly even as it reverses the judgment.

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