explaining that courts must assess the “de sirability” of privacy expectations and ask whether courts “should” recognize them by “balanc[ing]” the “impact on the individual’s sense of security . . . against the utility of the conduct as a technique of law enforcement”
How later courts described this case
- explaining that courts must assess the “de sirability” of privacy expectations and ask whether courts “should” recognize them by “balanc[ing]” the “impact on the individual’s sense of security . . . against the utility of the conduct as a technique of law enforcement”
- holding that, just as an informant “may write down for official use his conversations with a defendant and testify concerning them, . . . no different result is required if the agent . . . records them with electronic equipment which he is carrying on his person”
- finding that, “however strongly a defendant may trust an apparent colleague, his expectations in this respect are not protected by the Fourth Amendment when it turns out that the colleague is a government agent regularly communicating with the authorities”
- stating that the court must transcend the "search for subjective expectations” inasmuch as subjective expectations are inextricably linked to a determination of whether society considers the expectation reasonable
Written by the judges who cited it.
Distinguished
Distinguished by People v. Catania, 427 Mich. 447 (1986)
Justice Brennan concurred in the White result because, in his view, Katz was inapplicable to behavior which occurred before the decision in Katz, p 755.
The opinion
Mr. Justice Marshall,
dissenting.
I am convinced that the correct view of the Fourth Amendment in the area of electronic surveillance is one that brings the safeguards of the warrant requirement to bear on the investigatory activity involved in this case. In this regard I agree with the dissents of Mr. Justice *796 Douglas and Me. Justice Harlan. In short, I believe that On Lee v. United States, 343 U. S. 747 (1952), cannot be considered viable in light of the constitutional principles articulated in Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347 (1967), and other cases. And for reasons expressed by Mr. Justice Fortas in dissent in Desist v. United States, 394 U. S. 244, 269 (1969), I do not think we should feel constrained to employ a discarded theory of the Fourth Amendment in evaluating the governmental intrusions challenged here.