Fourth Amendment: Telephone Calls and Privacy Rights

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The fourth amendment guarantees everyone in the United States safety in their papers, persons, houses and effects from unrealistic seizures and searches. It further makes it clear that warrants shall not be issued nor violated unless there is a credible reason supported by affirmation or oath specifying the place, persons or things to be seized.

The term reasonable means that the police should have a search warrant whenever they want to search private areas. The police cannot bring to court evidence obtained by violating the fourth amendment to try suspected criminals (White & James, 2004).

However, the amendment fails to define in specific terms what is reasonable or unreasonable. The missing definition has led to confusion among learned and experienced lawyers.

Despite the confusion, many lawyers agree that in order to establish what is reasonable and what is not, the court should evaluate the case on the basis of the following criteria;

First, the court should assess the legal principle. The court should find out if there was any need for privacy. If the issue being argued was in public viewing, then the simple attempt to obtain privacy does not entitle one to protection in amendment four.

Secondly, one cannot claim right to privacy if there is a vantage from which anyone can be able to hear what was being communicated.

In addition, the court should examine the degree of privacy which certain buildings afford. For example one cannot claim right to privacy if communication was done in public places.

Finally the court will also examine the invasiveness and complexity of technology employed. As a result of increasing growth of technology, police officers will be forced to get warrants in order to be able to use some devises for surveillance (Amsterdam, 1974).

In the case Katz v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that FBI activities which electronically recorded telephone conversations made by the petitioner were not a violation of the fourth amendment. The Supreme Court agreed with the prosecution that phone conversations made in public telephone booths are not private and the police was right to use them in court as evidence. The reported eves dropping did not qualify as a search according to the fourth amendment. This means that the petitioner failed to justify the aspect of ‘search and seizure’ as stipulated in the fourth amendment. The Supreme Court also held that the investigating agency did not engage in any physical intrusion in a protected area.

Finally the Supreme Court noted that conversations made in public booths are not made for broadcast but the society does not view them as a private (Friedman, 1978).

This was a contradiction of what the same court ruled in 1928 in the case Olmstead vs. United States, 277. In this case, the court agreed with the petitioner on the basis of the following facts;

Firstly, the evidence which helped the FBI to discover the conspiracy was collected by trespassing the petitioner’s property. Messages on conspirator’s private phones were intercepted by more than four police officers.

Secondly the small wires inserted in the residence of the petitioner and leading to the main office were trespasses to the petitioner’s private property and qualify as ‘unreasonable search’ which the fourth amendment seeks to protect.

According to Katz, physical intrusion is not necessary for the court to realize that his rights to privacy had been violated against the fourth amendment. He imagines that since the telephone calls he made were private, the court ought to rule that his rights of privacy guaranteed in the fourth amendment had been violated.

References

Amsterdam, A.G. (1974). “Perspectives on the Fourth Amendment”. Minnesota Law Review, 58(11), 349-363.

Friedman,L. (1978). The Justices of the United States Supreme Court: Their Lives And Major Opinions. New York: Chelsea House Publishers.

White, W.S. & Tomkoricz, J.J. (2004). Criminal Procedure: Constitutional Constraints upon Investigation and Proof. Pittsburg: Pittsburg School of Law Press.

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Fourth Amendment: Telephone Calls and Privacy Rights

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