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Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 2510', '§ 2511', '§ 2515', '§ 2511', '§ 2511', '§ 4', '§ 2511', '§ 2511']

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United States v. White (401 U.S. 745)/Dissent Harlan
942491United States v. White (401 U.S. 745) — Dissent
* Before turning to matters of precedent and policy, several preliminary observations should be made. We deal here with the constitutional validity of instantaneous third-party electronic eavesdropping, conducted by federal law enforcement officers, without any prior judicial approval of the technique utilized, but with the consent and cooperation of a participant in the conversation, [1] and where the substance of the matter electronically overheard [2] is related in a federal criminal trial by those who eavesdropped as direct, not merely corroborative, evidence of the guilt of the nonconsenting party. The magnitude of the issue at hand is evidenced not simply by the obvious doctrinal difficulty of weighing such activity in the Fourth Amendment balance, but also, and more importantly, by the prevalence of police utilization of this technique. Professor Westin has documented in careful detail the numerous devices that make technologically feasible the Orwellian Big Brother. Of immediate relevance is his observation that "participant recording,' in which one participant in a conversation or meeting, either a police officer or a co-operating party, wears a concealed device that records the conversation or broadcasts it to others nearby * * * is used tens of thousands of times each year throughout the country, particularly in cases involving extortion, conspiracy, narcotics, gambling, prostitution, corruption by police officials * * * and similar crimes.' [3]
Moreover, as I shall undertake to show later in this opinion, the factors that must be reckoned with in reaching constitutional conclusions respecting the use of electronic eavesdropping as a tool of law enforcement are exceedingly subtle and complex. They have provoked sharp differences of opinion both within and without the judiciary, and the entire problem has been the subject of continuing study by various governmental and nongovernmental bodies. [4]
On Lee involved circumstances virtually identical to those now before us. There, Government agents enlisted the services of Chin Poy, a former friend of Lee, who was suspected of engaging in illegal narcotics traffic. Poy was equipped with a 'minifon' transmitting device which enabled outside Government agents to monitor Poy's conversations with Lee. In the privacy of his laundry, Lee made damaging admissions to Poy which were overheard by the agents and later related at trial. Poy did not testify. Mr. Justice Jackson, writing for five Justices, held the testimony admissible. Without reaching the question of whether a conversation could be the subject of a 'seizure' for Fourth Amendment purposes, as yet an unanswered if not completely open question, [5] the Court concluded that in the absence of a trespass, [6] no constitutional violation had occurred. [7]
By 1963, when we decided Lopez v. United States, 373 U.S. 427, 83 S.Ct. 1381, 10 L.Ed.2d 462, four members of the Court were prepared to pronounce On Lee and Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 48 S.Ct. 564, 72 L.Ed. 944 (1928), dead. [8] The pyre, they reasoned, had been stoked by decisions like Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 1441 (1963), which, on the one hand, expressly brought verbal communication within the sweep of the Fourth Amendment, [9] and, on the other, reinforced our Silverman and Jones decisions which 'refused to crowd the Fourth Amendment into the mold of local property law,' 373 U.S., at 460, 83 S.Ct., at 1399 (Brennan, J., dissenting).
Although the Court's decision in Lopez is cited by the Government as a reaffirmation of On Lee, it can hardly be thought to have nurtured the questionable rationale of that decision or its much-criticized ancestor, Olmstead. To the discerning lawyer Lopez could only give pause, not comfort. While the majority opinion, of which I was the author, declined to follow the course favored by the dissenting and concurring Justices by sounding the death knell for Olmstead and On Lee, our holding, despite an allusion to the absence of 'an unlawful * * * invasion of a constitutionally protected area,' 373 U.S., at 438-439, 83 S.Ct., at 1388, was bottomed on two premises: the corroborative use that was made of the tape recordings, which increased reliability in the fact-finding process, and the absence of a 'risk' not fairly assumed by petitioner. The tape recording was made by a participant in the conversation and the opinion emphasized this absence of a third-party intrusion, expressly noting that there was no 'electronic eavesdropping on a private conversation which government agents could not otherwise have overheard.' 373 U.S., at 440, 83 S.Ct., at 1389. [10] As I point out in Part III of this opinion, it is one thing to subject the average citizen to the risk that participants in a conversation with him will subsequently divulge its contents to another, but quite a different matter to foist upon him the risk that unknown third parties may be simultaneously listening in.
While Lopez cited On Lee without disavowal of its holding, 373 U.S., at 438, 83 S.Ct., at 1387, it is entirely accurate to say that we did not there reaffirm it. [11] No decision since Lopez gives a breath of life to the reasoning that led to the On Lee and Olmstead results, and it required little clairvoyance to predict the demise of the basic rational of On Lee and Olmstead foreshadowed by our subsequent opinions in Osborn v. United States, 385 U.S. 323, 87 S.Ct. 429, 17 L.Ed.2d 394 (1966), and Berger v. New York, 388 U.S. 41, 87 S.Ct. 1873, 18 L.Ed.2d 1040 (1967).
Only three years after Lopez, Mr. Justice Stewart writing for the Court in Osborn v. United States, supra, expressly abjured reliance on Lopez and, instead, approved identical conduct based on the 'circumstances under which the tape recording was obtained in (that) case,' facts that involved 'using (a recorder) under the most precise and discriminate circumstances, circumstances which fully met the 'requirement of particularity' which the dissenting opinion in Lopez found necessary.' Osborn v. United States, 385 U.S., at 327, 329, 87 S.Ct., at 432. [12]
Certainly of Osborn, Warden, and Camara did not plainly draw into question the vigor of earlier precedents, Berger v. New York, 388 U.S. 41, 87 S.Ct. 1873, 18 L.Ed.2d 1040, did, and expunged any remnants of former doctrine which might have been thought to have survived Osborn and Warden. [13] There, the Court, following a path opened by Mr. Justice Brandeis' dissent in Olmstead, and smoothed in Osborn and Camara, expressed concern about scientific developments that have put within the reach of the Government the private communications of 'anyone in almost any given situation,' 388 U.S., at 47, 87 S.Ct., at 1877; it left no doubt that, as a general principle, electronic eavesdropping was an invasion of privacy and that the Fourth Amendment prohibited unsupervised 'bugging.' Disturbed by the extent of intrusion which '(b)y its very nature * * * is broad in scope,' and noting that '(f)ew threats to liberty exist which are greater than that posed by the use of eavesdropping devices,' id., at 63, 87 S.Ct., at 1885, the Court brought to life the principle of reasonableness adumbrated in Osborn. Mr. Justice Clark, writing for the majority, reiterated the new approach:
Nor did the Court waver in resolve in the face of respondent's dire prediction that 'neither a warrant nor a statute authorizing eavesdropping can be drawn so as to meet the Fourth Amendment's requirements.' [14] It was said that '(i)f that be true than the 'fruits' of eavesdropping devices are barred under the Amendment.' 388 U.S., at 63, 87 S.Ct., at 1885. [15]
In Camara the Court brought under the Fourth Amendment administrative searches that had once been thought to be without its sweep. In doing so the opinion emphasized the desirability of establishing in advance those circumstances that justified the intrusion into a home and submitting them for review to an independent assessor, [16] principles that this Court has always deemed to be at the core of Fourth Amendment protections. [17] In bringing such searches within the ambit of the warrant requirement, Camara rejected the notion that the 'less hostile' nature of the search relegated this invasion of privacy to the 'periphery' of Fourth Amendment concerns. 387 U.S., at 530, 87 S.Ct., at 1731. The central consideration was, the Court concluded, that these administrative actions, no less than the typical search, involved government officials in an invasion of privacy, and that it was against the possible arbitrariness of invasion that the Fourth Amendment with its warrant machinery was meant to guard. Berger and Katz built, as noted earlier, on Osborn v. United States, supra, and Camara, and gave further expression to the principle. [18] It was not enough that government agents acted with restraint, for reasonableness must in the first instance be judged in a detached realm. [19]
To complete the tapestry, the strands of doctrine reflected in the search cases must be interwoven with the Court's other contemporary holdings. Most significant are Terry v. Ohio, supra, and Davis v. Mississippi, 394 U.S. 721, 89 S.Ct. 1394, 22 L.Ed.2d 676 (1969), which were also harbingers of the new thrust in Fourth Amendment doctrine. There the Court rejected the contention that only an arrest triggered the 'incident-to-arrest' exception to the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment, and held that any restraint of the person, however brief and however labeled, was subject to a reasonableness examination. 392 U.S., at 19, 88 S.Ct., at 1879. The controlling principle is 'to recognize that the Fourth Amendment governs all intrusions by agents of the public upon personal security, and to make the scope of the particular intrusion, in light of all the exigencies of the case, a central element in the analysis of reasonableness.' 392 U.S., at 18 n. 15, 88 S.Ct., at 1878. See also Davis v. Mississippi, 394 U.S., at 727, 89 S.Ct., at 1397. [20]
The plurality opinion seeks to erase the crucial distinction between the facts before us and these holdings by the following reasoning: if A can relay verbally what is revealed to him by B (as in Lewis and Hoffa), or record and later divulge it (as in Lopez), what difference does it make if A conspires with another to betray B by contemporaneously transmitting to the other all that is said? The contention is, in essence, an argument that the distinction between third-party monitoring and other undercover techniques is one of form and not substance. The force of the contention depends on the evaluation of two separable but intertwined assumptions: first, that there is no greater invasion of privacy in the third-party situation, and, second, that uncontrolled consensual surveillance in an electronic age is a tolerable technique of law enforcement, given the values and goals of our political system [21]
The first of these assumptions takes as a point of departure the so-called 'risk analysis' approach of Lewis, and Lopez, and to a lesser extent On Lee, or the expectations approach of Katz. See discussion in Part II, supra. While these formulations represent an advance over the unsophisticated trespass analysis of the common law, they too have their limitations and can, ultimately, lead to the substitution of words for analysis. [22] The analysis must, in my view, transcend the search for subjective expectations or legal attribution of assumptions of risk. Our expectations, and the risks we assume, are in large part reflections of laws that translate into rules the customs and values of the past and present.
Authority is hardly required to support the proposition that words would be measured a good deal more carefully and communication inhibited if one suspected his conversations were being transmitted and transcribed. Were third-party bugging a prevalent practice, it might well smother that spontaneity reflected in frivolous, impetuous, sacrilegious, and defiant discourse-that liberates daily life. [23] Much offhand exchange is easily forgotten and one may count on the obscurity of his remarks, protected by the very fact of a limited audience, and the likelihood that the listener will either overlook or forget what is said, as well as the listener's inability to reformulate a conversation without having to contend with a documented record. [24] All these values are sacrificed by a rule of law that permits official monitoring of private discourse limited only by the need to locate a willing assistant.
Finally, it is too easy to forget-and, hence, too often forgotten-that the issue here is whether to interpose a search warrant procedure between law enforcement agencies engaging in electronic eavesdropping and the public generally. By casting its 'risk analysis' solely in terms of the expectations and risks that 'wrongdoers' or 'one contemplating illegal activities' ought to bear, the plurality opinion, I think, misses the mark entirely. On Lee does not simply mandate that criminals must daily run the risk of unknown eavesdroppers prying into their private affairs; it subjects each and every law-abiding member of society to that risk. The very purpose of interposing the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement is to redistribute the privacy risks throughout society in a way that produces the results the plurality opinion ascribes to the On Lee rule. Abolition of On Lee would not end electronic eavesdropping. It would prevent public officials from engaging in that practice unless they first had probable cause to suspect an individual of involvement in illegal activities and had tested their version of the facts before a detached judicial officer. The interest On Lee fails to protect is the expectation of the ordinary citizen, who has never engaged in illegal conduct in his life, that he may carry on his private discourse freely, openly, and spontaneously without measuring his every word against the connotations it might carry when instantaneously heard by others unknown to him and unfamiliar with his situation or analyzed in a cold, formal record played days, months, or years after the conversation. Interposition of a warrant requirement is designed not to shield 'wrongdoers,' but to secure a measure of privacy and a sense of personal security throughout our society.
I reach these conclusions notwithstanding seemingly contrary views espoused by both Congress and an American Bar Association study group. [25] Both the ABA study and Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, 82 Stat. 212, 18 U.S.C. § 2510 et seq. (1964 ed., Supp. V), appear to reflect little more than this Court's prior decisions. Indeed, the comprehensive provisions of Title III are evidence of the extent of congressional concern with the impact of electronic surveillance on the right to privacy. This concern is further manifested in the introductory section of the Senate Committee Report. [26] Although § 2511(2)(c) exempts consensual and participant monitoring by law enforcement agents from the general prohibitions against surveillance without prior judicial authorization and makes the fruits admissible in court, see § 2515, congressional malaise with such conduct is evidenced by the contrastingly limited endorsement of consensual surveillance carried out by private individuals. [27] While individual Congressmen expressed concern about and criticized the provisions for unsupervised consensual electronic surveillance contained in § 2511, [28] the Senate Committee Report comment, to the effect that '(i)t (§ 2511(2)(c)) largely reflects existing law,' S.Rep.No.1097, 90th Cong., 2d Sess., 93-94 (1968), followed by citations to On Lee and Lopez, [29] strongly suggests that the provisions represent not intractable approval of these practices, but rather an intention to adopt these holdings and to leave to the courts the task of determining their viability in light of later holdings such as Berger, Osborn, and Katz. [30]
I find in neither the ABA study nor Title III any justification for ignoring the identifiable difference-albeit an elusive one in the present state of knowledge-between the impact on privacy of single-party informer bugging and third-party bugging, which in my opinion justifies drawing the constitutional line at this juncture between the two as regards the necessity for obtaining a warrant. Recognition of this difference is, at the very least, necessary to preserve the openness which is at the core of our traditions and is secure only in a society that tolerates official invasion of privacy simply in circumscribed situations.
Apparently Desist in now to be understood as holding that all lower federal courts are disabled from adjudicating on their merits all allegations of Fourth Amendment error not squarely supported by a prior decision of this Court. If so, one wonders what purpose is served by providing intermediate appellate review of constitutional issues in the federal criminal process. We must not forget that this Court is not the only tribunal in the entire federal system charged with a responsibility for the nurture and development of the Fourth Amendment. It is one thing to disable all federal courts, including this Court, from applying the settled law of the land to cases and controversies before them-as Desist does with Katz-and at least another giant step backward to preclude lower courts from resolving wholly disparate controversies in the light of constitutional principles. Can it be seriously contended, as the plurality opinion necessarily implies, that the Court of Appeals should not be reversed today on these alternative grounds had it simply omitted to discuss Katz? To force lower federal courts to adjudicate controversies either mechanistically or disingenuously is for me indefensible. Yet this is precisely what the plurality opinion does with its assertion that it is error for lower courts to 'dispose' of a case based on their 'understanding of the principles announced' in Katz for the next year or so.
^1 I agree with the plurality opinion, ante, at 747 n. 1, that the issue of the informer's consent to utilization of this technique is not properly before us. Whether persons can, consistent with constitutional prohibitions, by tricked or coerced into transmitting their conversations, with or without prior judicial approval, and, if not, whether other parties to the conversation would have standing to object to the admission against them of evidence so obtained, cf. Alderman v. United States, 394 U.S. 165, 89 S.Ct. 961, 22 L.Ed.2d 176 (1969), are questions upon which I express no opinion.
^2 In the case at hand agents were also surreptitiously placed in respondent's home at various times. No testimony by these agents was offered at trial.
^3 A. Westin, Privacy and Freedom 131 (1967). This investigative technique is also used to unearth 'political' crimes. 'Recordings of the private and public meetings of suspect groups (have) been growing. Police in Miami, Florida, used a hidden transmitter on a police agent to record statements made at meetings of a right-wing extremist group suspected of planning acts of terrorism. In 1964 a police undercover agent obtained recordings of incendiary statements by the leader of a Communist splinter movement in Harlem, at private meetings and at a public rally, which served as the basis for his conviction for attempting to overthrow the state government.' Ibid.
^4 Prior to Osborn v. United States, 385 U.S. 323, 87 S.Ct. 429, 17 L.Ed.2d 394 (1966), and Katz the issue before us, if raised, was usually dismissed in a routine fashion with a citation to On Lee, buttressed by a citation to Lopez v. United States, 373 U.S. 427, 83 S.Ct. 1381, 10 L.Ed.2d 462 (1963), with no attempt to distinguish the two cases despite the narrow rationale of the latter. See, e.g., United States v. Pasquinzo, 334 F.2d 74, 75 (CA6 1964); Maddox v. United States, 337 F.2d 234 (CA5 1964); but cf. United States v. Stone, 232 F.Supp. 396 (NDTex.1964). The few authorities post-dating Katz have divided on the continued viability of the On Lee result, compare, e.g., United States v. Jones, 292 F.Supp. 1001 (DC 1968), and cases cited therein, 292 F.Supp., at 1008, with Dancy v. United States, 390 F.2d 370 (CA5 1968) (Judge Fahy dissenting); United States v. Kaufer, 406 F.2d 550 (CA2 1969); People v. Fiedler, 30 A.D.2d 476, 294 N.Y.S.2d 368 (1968) (Justices Goldman and Bastow dissenting), aff'd without opinion, 24 N.Y.2d 960, 302 N.Y.S.2d 590, 250 N.E.2d 75 (1969). Perhaps the most comprehensive treatments, examining both the case law and policy considerations underlying the precise issue electronic surveillance with the consent of one of the parties-are by Professor Greenawalt, The Consent Problem in Wiretapping & Eavesdropping: Surreptitious Monitoring With the Consent of a Participant in a Conversation, 68 Col.L.Rev. 189 (1968), and Professor Kitch, Katz v. United States: The Limits of the Fourth Amendment, 1968 Sup.Ct.Rev. 133. For an interesting analysis of the impact of nonconsensual bugging on privacy and the role of prior judicial authorization see Spritzer, Electronic Surveillance By Leave of the Magistrate: The Case in Opposition, 118 U.Pa.L.Rev. 169 (1969). In addition, see American Bar Association, Project on Standards for Criminal Justice, Electronic Surveillance § 4.1 (Approved Draft 1971); J. Landynski, Search and Seizure and the Supreme Court 198-244 (1966); Schwartz, The Legitimation of Electronic Eavesdropping: The Politics of 'Law and Order,' 67 Mich.L.Rev. 455, 495-496 (1969); S. Dash, R. Schwartz, & R. Knowlton, The Eavesdroppers 421-441 (1959); Comment, Eavesdropping, Informers, and the Right of Privacy: A Judicial Tightrope, 52 Cornell L.Q. 975 (1967); King, Electronic Surveillance and Constitutional Rights: Some Recent Developments and Observations, 33 Geo. Wash.L.Rev. 240 (1964); Note, Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance-Title III of the Crime Control Act of 1968, 23 Rutgers L.Rev. 319 (1969); Blakey & Hancock, A Proposed Electronic Surveillance Control Act, 43 Notre Dame Law 657 (1968); Kamisar, The Wiretapping-Eavesdropping Problem: A Professor's View, 44 Minn.L.Rev. 891 (1960); Note, From Private Places to Personal Privacy: A Post-Katz Study of Fourth Amendment Protection, 43 N.Y.U.L.Rev. 968, 973-974 (1968); Scoular, Wiretapping and Eavesdropping Constitutional Development from Olmstead to Katz, 12 St. Louis L.J. 513 (1968); 20 Syracuse L.Rev. 791 (1969); 14 Vill.L.Rev. 758 (1969).
^5 See Goldman v. United States, 316 U.S. 129, 62 S.Ct. 993, 86 L.Ed. 1322 (1942). Silverman v. United States, 365 U.S. 505, 81 S.Ct. 679, 5 L.Ed.2d 734 (1961), made explicit that which was still unclear after Goldman: words overheard by trespass are subject to Fourth Amendment protection. See also Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963).
^6 Mr. Justice Jackson rejected petitioner's contention that Poy's deception vitiated Lee's consent to his entry on the premises. 343 U.. s., at 752, 72 S.Ct., at 971.
^7 343 U.S., at 751-752, 72 S.Ct., at 971:
^8 Both Chief Justice Warren, in concurrence, 373 U.S., at 441, 83 S.Ct., at 1389, and Mr. Justice Brennan, who wrote a dissenting opinion in which he was joined by Justices Douglas and Goldberg, 373 U.S., at 446, 83 S.Ct., at 1392, were of the view that Olmstead and On Lee should be overruled. Cf. United States v. Stone, 232 F.Supp. 396 (N D Tex.1964).
^9 While Silverman v. United States, 365 U.S. 505, 81 S.Ct. 679, 5 L.Ed.2d 734, would seem to have eliminated any lingering uncertainty on this score, cf. Goldman v. United States, 316 U.S. 129, 62 S.Ct. 993, Wong Sun articulated the unspoken premise of Silverman. 'The exclusionary rule has traditionally barred from trial physical, tangible materials obtained either during or as a direct result of an unlawful invasion. It follows from our holding in Silverman v. United States, 365 U.S. 505, 81 S.Ct. 679, 5 L.Ed.2d 734, that the Fourth Amendment may protect against the overhearing of verbal statements as well as against the more traditional seizure of 'papers and effects.' Similarly, testimony as to matters observed during an unlawful invasion has been excluded in order to enforce the basis constitutional policies. (Citation omitted.) Thus, verbal evidence which derives so immediately from an unlawful entry and an unauthorized arrest as the officers' action in the present case is no less the 'fruit' of official illegality than the more common tangible fruits of the unwarranted intrusion.' 371 U.S., at 485, 83 S.Ct., at 1407. While I joined Mr. Justice Clark's dissenting opinion, 371 U.S., at 498, 83 S.Ct. at 423, our differences with the majority involved only their analysis of probable cause.
^10 'Stripped to its essentials, petitioner's argument amounts to saying that he has a constitutional right to rely on possible flaws in the agent's memory, or to challenge the agent's credibility without being beset by corroborating evidence that is not susceptible of impeachment. For no other argument can justify excluding an accurate version of a conversation that the agent could testify to from memory. We think the risk that petitioner took in offering a bribe to Davis fairly included the risk that the offer would be accurately reproduced in court, whether by faultless memory or mechanical recording.' 373 U.S., at 439, 83 S.Ct., at 1388.
^11 The Chief Justice and dissenters, concerned with the possibility that 'the majority opinion may be interpreted as reaffirming sub silentio the result in On Lee v. United States,' expressly repudiated it. 373 U.S., at 441, 83 S.Ct., at 1389 (first emphasis added).
^12 In a footnote the Court in Osborn outlined a new approach, foreshadowed by Mr. Justice Brennan's Lopez dissent, in which the doctrinal basis of our subsequent Fourth Amendment decisions may be said to have had its genesis:
^13 See Schwartz, The Legitimation of Electronic Eavesdropping: The Politics of 'Law and Order,' 67 Mich.L.Rev. 455, 458-459 (1969).
^14 My principal disagreement with the Court in Berger involved the wisdom of reviewing the New York statute on its face rather than focusing on the facts and circumstances of the particular case, and the exposition of the appropriate application of warrant principles to eavesdropping situations. 388 U.S., at 96 106, 87 S.Ct., at 1902-1908.
^15 Cf. Spritzer, Electronic Surveillance By Leave of the Magistrate: The Case in Opposition, 118 U.Pa.L.Rev. 169 (1969).
^16 See Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 96, 85 S.Ct. 223, 228, 13 L.Ed.2d 142 (1964), where the Court emphasized the importance of 'an objective predetermination' uncomplicated by a presentation not 'subtly influenced by the familiar shortcomings of hindsight judgment.'
^17 The classic exposition of the purposes and importance of the warrant requirement is to be found in the opinion of Mr. Justice Jackson in his opinion for the Court in Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 13-14, 68 S.Ct. 367, 369, 92 L.Ed. 436 (1948):
^18 See Part II-A, supra. See United States v. Jones, 292 F.Supp. 1001 (DC 1968).
^19 "Over and again this Court has emphasized that the mandate of the (Fourth) Amendment requires adherence to judicial processes,' United States v. Jeffers, 342 U.S. 48, 51, 72 S.Ct. 93, 95, 96 L.Ed. 59, and that searches conducted outside the judicial process, without prior approval by judge or magistrate, are per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment-subject only to a few specifically established and well-delineated exceptions.' Katz v. United States, 389 U.S., at 356-357, 88 S.Ct., at 514.
The warrant procedure need not always entail an inquiry into the existence of probable cause in the usual sense. Cf. Camara v. Municipal Court. For example, where an informer is being sent in to investigate a dangerous crime, and there is reason to believe his person would be in danger, monitoring might be justified and a warrant issued even though no probable cause existed to believe the particular meeting would provide evidence of particular criminal activity. Cf. Warden v. Hayden, 387 U.S. 294, 298, 87 S.Ct. 1642, 1645, 18 L.Ed.2d 782 (1967); McDonald v. United States, 335 U.S., at 455-456, 69 S.Ct, at 193-194; Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S., at 14-15, 68 S.Ct., at 369-370; Ker v. California, 374 U.S. 23, 83 S.Ct. 1623, 10 L.Ed.2d 726 (1963); Trupiano v. United States, 334 U.S. 699, 68 S.Ct. 1229, 92 L.Ed. 1663 (1948), all taking the view that exceptions to the warrant requirement may be made in narrowly defined special circumstances.
^20 I do not consider Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U.S. 42, 90 S.Ct. 1975, 26 L.Ed.2d 419 (1970), a retreat from the general proposition established by Katz and Chimel. While I disagreed with the Court, see my separate opinion, 399 U.S., at 55, 90 S.Ct., at 1983, moving vehicles have always presented a special Fourth Amendment problem. Compare Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 45 S.Ct. 280, 69 L.Ed. 543 (1925), with Agnello v. United States, 269 U.S. 20, 46 S.Ct. 4, 70 L.Ed. 145 (1925).
^21 Professor Westin has observed:
^22 See Kitch, supra, n. 4, at 141-142, 150-152.
^23 Greenawalt, supra, n. 4; Comment, Eavesdropping, Informers, and the Right of Privacy: A Judicial Tightrope, 52 Cornell L.Q. 975, 983 (1967); Westin, supra, n. 3, at 390.
See also separate views of Senator Hart set forth in S.Rep.No.1097, 90th Cong., Sess., 175 (1968); Proposed Legislation on Wiretapping and Eavesdropping after Berger v. New York and Katz v. United States, 7 Bull. No. 2 of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York 1, 3, 22-26 (Aug. 1968).
^24 From the same standpoint it may also be thought that electronic recording by an informer of a face-to-face conversation with a criminal suspect, as in Lopez, should be differentiated from third-party monitoring, as in On Lee and the case before us, in that the latter assures revelation to the Government by obviating the possibility that the informer may be tempted to renege in his undertaking to pass on to the Government all that he has learned. While the continuing vitality of Lopez is not drawn directly into question by this case, candor compels me to acknowledge that the views expressed in this opinion may impinge upon that part of the reasoning in Lopez which suggested that a suspect has no right to anticipate unreliable testimony. I am now persuaded that such an approach misconceives the basic issue, focusing, as it does, on the interests of a particular individual rather than evaluating the impact of a practice on the sense of security that is the true concern of the Fourth Amendment's protection of privacy. Distinctions do, however, exist between Lopez, where a known Government agent uses a recording device, and this case which involves third-party overhearing. However unlikely that the participant recorder will not play his tapes, the fact of the matter is that in a third-party situation the intrusion is instantaneous. Moreover, differences in the prior relationship between the investigator and the suspect may provide a focus for future distinctions. See Greenawalt, supra, n. 4.
^25 See ABA Project, supra, n. 4. The commentary states at the outset: 'This standard reflects the prevailing law.' The drafters apparently take as their starting point the risk analysis approach, relying on cases holding that contents of letters may be revealed where otherwise lawfully obtained. Stroud v. United States, 251 U.S. 15, 40 S.Ct. 50, 64 L.Ed. 103 (1919); Ex parte Jackson, 96 U.S. 727, 737, 24 L.Ed. 877 (1878); see also Blakey & Hancock, A Proposed Electronic Surveillance Control Act, supra, n. 4, at 663, n. 11. The various state provisions are set forth in Greenawalt, supra, n. 4, at 207-211.
^26 See S.Rep.No. 1097, 90th Cong., 2d Sess., 69 (1968).
^27 See § 2511(2)(d), which prohibits nongovernmental recording and listening when the 'communication is intercepted for the purpose of committing any criminal or tortious act in violation of the Constitution or laws of the United States or of any State or for the purpose of committing any other injurious act.'
^28 See S.Rep.No.1097, supra, n. 26, at 175 (remarks of Sen. Hart); 114 Cong.Rec. 11598-11599, 14470-14472.
^29 S.Rep.No.1097, supra, n. 26, at 93-94.
^30 Indeed, the plain thrust of Title III appears to be to accommodate the holdings of Berger and Katz, and provides considerable reassurance to me in adopting the views expressed herein which would doubtless, without more, cast a cloud upon the constitutionality of § 2511. Since the Title III question has been neither briefed nor argued, as this case arose prior to its enactment, I would expressly reserve judgment should it prove upon further study that Congress had an affirmative intention to restrict warrant requirements to nonconsensual surveillance. We would then have to face the question, summarily dealt with in another context in Katzenbach v. Morgan, 384 U.S. 641, 651 n. 10, 86 S.Ct. 1717, 1724, 16 L.Ed.2d 828 (1966), what deference should be given a congressional determination that certain procedures not plainly violations of due process, should be permitted. See Greenawalt, supra, n. 4, at 232 n. 207. Whether Congress may place restrictions on bugging by local law enforcement not mandated by the Fourteenth Amendment is also an unanswered question. See Spritzer, supra, n. 15, at 177 n. 46.
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