# Katz v. United States > Supreme Court of the United States · December 18, 1967 · 389 U.S. 347 URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9423555 ## Case - **Full name:** Katz v. United States - **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States - **Decided:** December 18, 1967 - **Citations:** 389 U.S. 347; 88 S. Ct. 507; 19 L. Ed. 2d 576; 1967 U.S. LEXIS 2 - **Precedential status:** Published - **Opinion:** Concurrence by White - **Judges:** Black, Brennan, Douglas, Harlan, Marshall, Stewart, White - **Cited by:** 11,133 later opinions in the Frix Law Library ## Citator (automated) - **Yellow flag:** Reported superseded by statute, as recognized in United States v. Koyomejian — not on the Supreme Court's list. - Negative treatments: 4 - Distinguished by: 9 - Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9423555 ## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction) - finding that the officers would have had a right to sniff the students’ lockers and automobiles and, therefore, the odors detected by their canines were not protected by the Fourth Amendment because “the dog’s olfactory sense merely ‘enhances’ that of the police officer” rathe… - holding, in a constitutional context, that affirmative acts of concealment create an expectation of privacy because ”[o]ne who ... shuts the [phone booth door] behind him, and pays ... to place a call is surely entitled to assume the words he utters into the mouthpiece will no… - holding that “the Fourth amendment protects people, not places” and that when an individual “seeks to preserve [something] as private” and this expectation of privacy is “constitutionally protected,” official intrusion into that privacy is a search that requires a warrant supp… - explaining that "the Constitution requires 'that the deliberate, impartial judgment of a judicial officer ... be interposed between the citizen and the police' " (alteration in original) (quoting Wong Sun v. United States , 371 U.S. 471, 481-82, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (19… - stating 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" (footnote call number omitted) ## Opinion text Mr. Justice White, concurring. I agree that the official surveillance of petitioner’s telephone conversations in a public booth must be sub *363 jected to the test of reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment and that on the record now before us the particular surveillance undertaken was unreasonable absent a warrant properly authorizing it. This application of the Fourth Amendment need not interfere with legitimate needs of law enforcement. * In joining the Court’s opinion, I note the Court’s acknowledgment that there are circumstances in which it is reasonable to search without a warrant. In this connection, in footnote 23 the Court points out that today’s decision does not reach national security cases. Wiretapping to protect the security of the Nation has been authorized by successive Presidents. The present Administration would apparently save national security cases from restrictions against wiretapping. See Berger v. New York, 388 U. S. 41, 112-118 (1967) (White, J., *364 dissenting). We should not require the warrant procedure and the magistrate’s judgment if the President of the United States or his chief legal officer, the Attorney General, has considered the requirements of national security and authorized electronic surveillance as reasonable. In previous eases, which are undisturbed by today’s decision, the Court has upheld, as reasonable under the Fourth Amendment, admission at trial of evidence obtained (1) by an undercover police agent to whom a defendant speaks without knowledge that he is in the employ of the police, Hoffa v. United States, 385 U. S. 293 (1966); (2) by a recording device hidden on the person of such an informant, Lopez v. United States, 373 U. S. 427 (1963); Osborn v. United States, 385 U. S. 323 (1966); and (3) by a policeman listening to the secret micro-wave transmissions of an agent conversing with the defendant in another location, On Lee v. United States, 343 U. S. 747 (1952). When one man speaks to another he takes all the risks ordinarily inherent in so doing, including the risk that the man to whom he speaks will make public what he has heard. The Fourth Amendment does not protect against unreliable (or law-abiding) associates, Hofia v. United States, supra. It is but a logical and reasonable extension of this principle that a man take the risk that his hearer, free to memorize what he hears for later verbatim repetitions, is instead recording it or transmitting it to another. The present case deals with an entirely different situation, for as the Court emphasizes the petitioner “sought to exclude . . . the uninvited ear,” and spoke under circumstances in which a reasonable person would assume that uninvited ears were not listening. --- Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9423555. Public record. Not legal advice.