Opinion ID: 332063
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: As Applied to the Facts of This Case

Text: 73 Appellants persist, however, in their contention that the interception here, in the extent to which it lacked specificity and minimization (and for the reasons set forth in our earlier quotation from one of their briefs), constituted the very sort of intrusion upon privacy that the founding fathers found so offensive in the general search. This, as we understand it, is to say that any long-continued and comprehensive interception to which no party to the conversations has consented, by virtue of its unavoidably intrusive character, must be held to be unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment despite reasonable and good-faith efforts to minimize interception of innocent conversations. Mr. Justice Douglas appears to support this view in his opinion dissenting in Osborn v. United States, 385 U.S. 323, 340, 353, 87 S.Ct. 429, 17 L.Ed.2d 394 (1966). 74 As we have already discussed, however, our reading of Katz and Berger, as well as Osborn, convinces us that when the safeguards specified in Title III have been provided, interception under court order on probable cause meets the requirements of the Fourth Amendment. Congress was well aware of the extraordinarily offensive character of such intrusions. Not only did it attempt scrupulously to meet the constitutional standards suggested by the Supreme Court, but it attempted also to assure that no interception ever would be sought save where there was responsible judgment by a high executive officer prior to application for court order authorizing any wire interception that governmental need outweighed the values of personal privacy underlying the Fourth Amendment. 75 'General search,' in the context of wire interception, is a concept not easy to grasp. The term in general use conjures up visions of wide-ranging searches without time limits, for unspecified items the very existence of which is unknown until they are discovered--searches wherever and whenever the searching officer chooses and for whatever he may think is worth seizing. See, e.g., Stanford v. Texas, 379 U.S. 476, 481--86, 85 S.Ct. 506, 13 L.Ed.2d 431 (1965); Marcus v. Search Warrant, 367 U.S. 717, 724--29, 81 S.Ct. 1708, 6 L.Ed.2d 1127 (1961). 76 However, if that which is seizable and the place where it is to be sought are specified by order of court or magistrate, the fact that search for it ranged at large throughout a house into areas where personal privacy is most in need of protection is not enough to render the search unlawful as 'general' if it was reasonable to suppose that the object of the search could be found where it was sought. E.g., Warden v. Hayden, 387 U.S. 294, 299--300, 87 S.Ct. 1642, 18 L.Ed.2d 782 (1967). Nor is the search invalidated by the fact that in attempts to identify that which was specified as seizable many unseizable items were examined and rejected, including some that were highly private. 77 We would note further that much of the interception of private conversation which occurred in this case was the inevitable consequence of the decision of appellants to intermingle their private lives and their narcotics activities. This factor has been noted in a different context. See Lewis v. United States, 385 U.S. 206, 213, 87 S.Ct. 424, 17 L.Ed.2d 312 (1966) (Brennan, J., concurring). 78 We conclude that appellants' contentions that it was error not to suppress the fruits of the wire interceptions are without merit.