Court Opinion

ID: 9419246
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:47:54.803053+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:16.570697
License: Public Domain

Me. Justice Murphy,
dissenting:
I cannot agree, for to me it is clear that the use of the detectaphone under the circumstances revealed by this record was an unreasonable search and seizure within the clear intendment of the Fourth Amendment.
One of the great boons secured to the inhabitants of this country by the Bill of Rights is the right of personal privacy guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment. In numerous ways the law protects the individual against unwarranted intrusions by others into his private affairs.1 It compensates him for trespass on his property or against his person. It prohibits the publication against his will *137of his thoughts, sentiments, and emotions, regardless of whether those are expressed in words, painting, sculpture, music, or in other modes.2 It may prohibit the use of his photograph for commercial purposes without his consent.3 **&These are restrictions on the activities of private persons. But the Fourth Amendment puts a restraint on the arm of the Government itself, and prevents it from invading the sanctity of a man’s home or his private quarters in a chase for a suspect, except under safeguards calculated to prevent oppression and abuse of authority.
On the value of the right to privacy, as dear as any to free men, little can or need be added to what was said in Entick v. Carrington, 19 How. St. Tr. 1030, Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, and Mr. Justice Brandeis’ memorable dissent in Olmstead v. United States, 277 U. S. 438, 471. Suffice it to say that the spiritual freedom of the individual depends in no small measure upon the preservation of that right. Insistence on its retention does not mean that a person has anything to conceal, but means rather that the choice should be his as to what he wishes to reveal, saving only to the Government the right to seek out crime under a procedure with suitable safeguards for the protection of individual rights, such as the warrant whose requisites are set forth in the Fourth Amendment.
*138It will be conceded that if the language of the Amendment were given only a literal construction, it might not fit the case now presented for review. The petitioners were not physically searched. Their homes were not entered. Their files were not ransacked. Their papers and effects were not disturbed. But it has not been the rule or practice of this Court to permit the scope and operation of broad principles ordained by the Constitution to be restricted, by a literal reading of its provisions, to those evils and phenomena that were contemporary with its framing. Cf. Weems v. United States, 217 U. S. 349, 373; United States v. Classic, 313 U. S. 299, 316.
The conditions of modern life have greatly expanded the range and character of those activities which require protection from intrusive action by Government officials if men and women are to enjoy the full benefit of that privacy which the Fourth Amendment was intended to provide. It is our duty to see that this historic provision receives a construction sufficiently liberal and elastic to make it serve the needs and manners of each succeeding generation. Cf. Grau v. United States, 287 U. S. 124, 128, and cases cited. Otherwise, it may become obsolete, incapable of providing the people of this land adequate protection. To this end we must give mind not merely to the exact words of the Amendment, but also to its historic purpose, its high political character, and its modern social and legal implications.
With the passing of the years since 1787, marked changes have ensued in the ways of conducting business and personal affairs. Many transactions of a business or personal character that in the eighteenth century were conducted at home are now carried on in business offices away from the home. If the method and habits of the people in 1787 with respect to the conduct of their private business had been what they are today, is it possible to think that the framers of the Bill of Rights would have been *139any less solicitous of the privacy of transactions conducted in the office of a lawyer, a doctor, or a man of business, than they were of a person’s papers and effects? 4
There was no physical entry in this case. But the search of one’s home or office no longer requires physical entry, for science has brought forth far more effective devices for the invasion of a person’s privacy than the direct and obvious methods of oppression which were detested by our forebears and which inspired the Fourth Amendment.5 Surely the spirit motivating the framers of that Amendment would abhor these new devices no less. Physical entry may be wholly immaterial.6 Whether the search of private quarters is accomplished by placing on the outer walls of the sanctum a detectaphone that transmits to the outside listener the intimate details of a private conversation, or by new methods of photography that penetrate walls or overcome distances, the privacy of the citizen is equally invaded by agents of the Government and intimate personal matters are laid bare to view. Such *140invasions of privacy, unless they are authorized by a warrant issued in the manner and form prescribed by the Amendment, or otherwise conducted under adequate safeguards defined by statute, are at one with the evils which have heretofore been held to be within the Fourth Amendment, and equally call for remedial action.7
On the basis of the narrow, literal construction of the search and seizure clause of the Fourth Amendment adopted in Olmstead v. United States, 277 U. S. 438,8 Gov-*141eminent officials could well believe that activities of the character here involved did not contravene the Constitutional mandate. But for my part, I think that the Olmstead case was wrong. The error of the stultifying construction there adopted is best shown by the results to which it leads. It is strange doctrine that keeps inviolate the most mundane observations entrusted to the permanence of paper but allows the revelation of thoughts uttered within the sanctity of private quarters, thoughts perhaps too intimate to be set down even in a secret diary, or indeed, utterances about which the common law drew the cloak of privilege—the most confidential revelations between husband and wife, client and lawyer, patient and physician, and penitent and spiritual adviser. Nor can I see any rational basis for denying to the modern means of communication the same protection that is extended by the Amendment to the sealed letter in the mails. See Ex parte Jackson, 96 U. S. 727. Officers conducting an unreasonable search are seeking evidence as such; the form it takes is of no concern to them.
But even if Olmstead’s case is to stand, it does not govern the present case. It was not the intention of petitioners to project their conversations beyond the walls of petitioner Shulman’s private office.9 Whatever may be said of a wire-tapping device that permits an outside telephone conversation to be overheard, it can hardly be doubted that the application of a detectaphone to the walls of a home or a private office constitutes a direct invasion of the privacy of the occupant, and a search of his private quarters.
*142The circumstance that petitioners were obviously •guilty of gross fraud is immaterial. The Amendment provides no exception in its guaranty of protection. Its great purpose was to protect the citizen against oppressive tactics. Its benefits are illusory indeed if they are denied to persons who may have been convicted with evidence gathered by the very means which the Amendment forbids. Cf. Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S. 383. Its protecting arm extends to all alike, worthy and unworthy, without distinction. Rights intended to protect all must be extended to all, lest they so fall into desuetude in the course of denying them to the worst of men as to afford no aid to the best of men in time of need.
The benefits that accrue from this and other articles of the Bill of Rights are characteristic of democratic rule. They are among the amenities that distinguish a free society from one in which the rights and comforts of the individual are wholly subordinated to the interests of the state. We cherish and uphold them as necessary and salutary checks on the authority of government. They provide a standard of official conduct which the courts must enforce. At a time when the nation is called upon to give freely of life and treasure to defend and preserve the institutions of democracy and freedom, we should not permit any of the essentials of freedom to lose vitality through legal interpretations that are restrictive and inadequate for the period in which we live.

 See generally, Brandeis and Warren, “The Right to Privacy,” 4 Harv. L. Rev. 193 (1890).

 Ibid., pp. 198-199.

 See Pavesich v. New England Life Ins. Co., 122 Ga. 190, 50 S. E. 68; Bazemore v. Savannah Hospital, 171 Ga. 257, 155 S. E. 194; Kunz v. Allen, 102 Kan. 883, 172 P. 532; Foster-Milburn v. Chinn, 134 Ky. 424, 120 S. W. 364; Munden v. Harris, 153 Mo. App. 652, 134 S. W. 1076; Flake v. Greensboro News Co., 212 N. C. 780, 195 S. E. 55; Holloman v. Life Ins. Co. of Virginia, 192 S. C. 454, 7 S. E. 2d 169. Cf. Henry v. Cherry & Webb, 30 R. I. 13, 73 A. 97; Hillman v. Star Publishing Co., 64 Wash. 691, 117 P. 594; Atkinson v. John E. Doherty & Co., 121 Mich. 372; 80 N. W. 285; Jones v. Herald Post Co., 230 Ky. 227, 18 S. W. 2d 972; O’Brien v. Pabst Sales Co. 124 F. 2d 167. See also § 51 of the New York Civil Rights Law.

 Papers taken from an office in the course of an unreasonable search are taken in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, 251 U. S. 385; Gouled v. United States, 255 U. S. 298; Go-Bart Importing Co. v. United States, 282 U. S. 344; United States v. Lefkowitz, 285 U. S. 452.

 Those devices were the general warrants, the writs of assistance and the lettres de cachet.
On the subject of the general warrant, see Entick v. Carrington, 19 How. St. Tr. 1030, and May, Constitutional History of England (2d ed.), vol. Ill, pp. 1-10.
For an account of the writs of assistance, see Quincy (Mass.) 51 (1761) and Gray’s appendix to Quincy’s Reports. See also Tudor, James Otis, p. 66, and John Adams, Works, vol. III, p. 524.
The lettres de cachet are discussed in Chassaigne, Les Lettres de Cachet sous L’ancien Regime (Paris, 1903).

 “It is not the breaking of his [man’s] doors, and the rummaging of his drawers, that constitutes the essence of the offence”—those are but “circumstances of aggravation.” Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, 630.
*1406 A warrant can be devised which would permit the use of a detectaphone. Cf. Article 1, § 12 of the New York Constitution (1938). And, while a search- warrant, with its procedural safeguards has generally been regarded as prerequisite to the reasonableness of a search in those areas of essential privacy, such as the home, to which the Fourth Amendment applies (see Agnello v. United States, 269 U. S. 20, 32), some method of responsible administrative supervision could be evolved for the use of the detectaphone which, like the valid search warrant, would adequately protect the privacy of the individual against irresponsible and indiscriminate intrusions by Government officers. See Wigmore, Evidence (3d ed.), vol. 8, § 2184b, pp. 51-2.
While the detectaphone is primarily used to obtain evidence, and while such use appears to be condemned by the rulings of this Court in Gouled v. United States, 255 U. S. 298, and United States v. Lefkowitz, 285 U. S. 452, I am not prepared to say that this purpose necessarily makes all detectaphone "searches” unreasonable, no matter what the circumstances, or the procedural safeguards employed. Cf. Marron v. United States, 275 U. S. 192. See Wigmore, Evidence (3d ed.), vol. 8, §§ 2251, 2264; 31 Yale L. J. 518, 522; Chafee, Progress of the Law, 1919-1922, 35 Harv. L. Rev. 673, 699; 32 Col. L. Rev. 386; Cooley, Constitutional Limitations (8th ed.), vol. 1, p. 625.

 The Olmstead case limits the search and seizure clause to "an official search and seizure of his [defendant’s] person or such a seizure of his papers or his tangible material effects, or an actual physical invasion of his house ‘or curtilage’ for the purpose of making a seizure.” 277 U. S. 438, 466.
The decisions of this Court prior to the Olmstead case insisted on a liberal construction of the Fourth Amendment and placed within its compass activities bearing slight, if any, resemblance to the mis*141chiefs known at the time of its adoption. See Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616; Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, 251 U. S. 385; Gouled v. United States, 255 U. S. 298.

 It also appears that the Government agents overheard Shulman’s end of some outside telephone conversations.