Reasonable Expectations of Privacy and High Technology Surveillance: The Impact on California v. Ciraolo and Dow Chemical v. U.S. On Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act

• NCJ Number: 116294
• Journal: Washington University Law Quarterly Volume: 66 Issue: 1 Dated: (1988) Pages: 111-133
• Author(s): R M Evans
• Date Published: 1988
• Length: 23 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Legislation/Policy Analysis
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

Federal courts should uphold the Congressional intent behind Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 by limiting the standard set in two recent United States Supreme Court decisions that considerably limited the breadth of an individual's objective expectation of privacy in cases of electronic surveillance or oral communications.

Abstract

The decisions in California v. Ciraolo and Dow Chemical Company v. U.S. changed the expectation standard that was set out in the decision in Katz v. United States and incorporated in Title III. The judicial decisions in these cases reverted back to an analysis which allows the unwarranted uses of known technology. These decisions are incomprehensible both because their 'public availability' standard ignores the intrusiveness of new technologies and because all forms of surveillance require some physical intrusion of the suspect's property. A more appropriate approach would be to refocus fourth amendment analysis on the individual's reasonable expectation of privacy. This narrow reading maintains the traditional Katz test enables fourth amendment protection to grow with the development of new technology. 155 footnotes.