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KATZ v. UNITED STATES (1967)
1. Facts.
The petitioner with transmitting wagering information by telephone from Los Angeles to Miami and Boston, in violation of a federal statute. Overheard by FBI agents who had attached an electronic listening and recording device to the outside of the public telephone booth from which he had placed his calls. At trial, the Government was permitted, over the petitioner's objection, to introduce evidence of the petitioner's end of telephone conversations. The petitioner was convicted in the District Court for the Southern District of California under an eight-count indictment charging. In affirming his conviction, the Court of Appeals rejected the contention that the recordings had been obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment, because "there was no physical entrance into the area occupied by the petitioner."
2. Issue.
The issue is whether a public telephone booth is a constitutionally protected area so that evidence obtained by attaching an electronic listening recording device to the top of such a booth is obtained in violation of the right to privacy of the user of the booth, and a search and seizure can be said to be violative of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
3. Rule.
Lewis v. United States.
What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection.
Rios v. United States.
Seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected.
Silverman v. United States.
We have expressly held that the Fourth Amendment governs not only the seizure of tangible items, but extends as well to the recording of oral statements, overheard without any "technical trespass under . . . local property law."
Agnello v. United States.
Searches conducted without warrants have been held unlawful "notwithstanding facts unquestionably showing probable cause,"
4. Application.
In the first place, the correct solution of Fourth Amendment problems is not necessarily promoted by incantation of the phrase "constitutionally protected area." Secondly, the Fourth Amendment cannot be translated into a general constitutional "right to privacy." That Amendment protects individual privacy against certain kinds of governmental intrusion, but its protections go further, and often have nothing to do with privacy at all. Other provisions of the Constitution protect personal privacy from other forms of governmental invasion. But the protection of a person's general right to privacy -- his right to be let alone by other people -- is, like the protection of his property and of his very life, left largely to the law of the individual States. The petitioner has strenuously argued that the booth was a "constitutionally protected area." The Government has maintained with equal vigor that it was not. For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. Lewis v. United States. But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected. Rios v. United States.
The Government stresses the fact that the telephone booth from which the petitioner made his calls was constructed partly of glass. But what he sought to exclude when he entered the booth was not the intruding eye -- it was the uninvited ear. He did not shed his right to do so simply because he made his calls from a place where he might be seen. No less than an individual in a business office, in a friend's apartment, or in a taxicab, a person in a telephone booth may rely upon the protection of the Fourth Amendment. One who occupies it, shuts the door behind him, and pays the toll that permits him to place a call is surely entitled to assume that the words he utters into the mouthpiece will not be broadcast to the world. To read the Constitution more narrowly is to ignore the vital role that the public telephone has come to play in private communication. The Government contends, however, that the activities of its agents in this case should not be tested by Fourth Amendment requirements, for the surveillance technique they employed involved no physical penetration of the telephone booth from which the petitioner placed his calls. However, we have departed from the narrow view. We have expressly held that the Fourth Amendment governs not only the seizure of tangible items, but extends as well to the recording of oral statements, overheard without any "technical trespass under . . . local property law." Silverman v. United States. Therefore, the Government's activities in electronically listening to and recording the petitioner's words violated the privacy upon which he justifiably relied while using the telephone booth, and thus constituted a "search and seizure" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. The fact that the electronic device employed to achieve that end did not happen to penetrate the wall of the booth can have no constitutional significance.
The question remaining for decision, then, is whether the search and seizure conducted in this case complied with constitutional standards. In that regard, the Government's position is that its agents acted in an entirely defensible manner: they did not begin their electronic surveillance until investigation of the petitioner's activities had established a strong probability that he was using the telephone in question to transmit gambling information to persons in other States, in violation of federal law. Moreover, the surveillance was limited, both in scope and in duration, to the specific purpose of establishing the contents of the petitioner's unlawful telephonic communications. The agents confined their surveillance to the brief periods during which he used the telephone booth, and they took great care to overhear only the conversations of the petitioner himself. It is apparent that the agents in this case acted with restraint. Yet the inescapable fact is that this restraint was imposed by the agents themselves, not by a judicial officer. They were not required, before commencing the search, to present their estimate of probable cause for detached scrutiny by a neutral magistrate. They were not compelled, during the conduct of the search itself, to observe precise limits established in advance by a specific court order. Nor were they directed, after the search had been completed, to notify the authorizing magistrate in detail of all that had been seized. Searches conducted without warrants have been held unlawful "notwithstanding facts unquestionably showing probable cause," Agnello v. United States. Therefore, ,nor could the use of electronic surveillance without prior authorization be justified on grounds of "hot pursuit." Wherever a man may be, he is entitled to know that he will remain free from unreasonable searches and seizures. The government agents here ignored "the procedure of antecedent justification . . . that is central to the Fourth Amendment," a procedure that we hold to be a constitutional precondition of the kind of electronic surveillance involved in this case. Because the surveillance here failed to meet that condition, and because it led to the petitioner's conviction, the judgment must be reversed.
5. Conclusion.
It is so ordered.
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강의를 통해서 1960년대 시기가 시민의 권리 증진이 촉진되는 판결 경향이 두드러진 시기임을 배웠으며, 따라서 본 사건도 이전 선례를 뒤집은 판결이 도출되었음을 배울 수 있었습니다. 사생활 보호의 범위, 전자 감시의 헌법적 전제조건, 수정헌법 4조의 절차와의 상관관계에 대해서 생각해 볼 수 있었습니다.
[1] Carpenter v. United States, (2018)는 위치 정보(CSLI)의 프라이버시에 관한 획기적인 미국 대법원 사건이었습니다. 법원은 정부가 수색 영장 없이 휴대폰의 물리적 위치가 포함 CSLI 기록에 접근함으로써 미국 수정 헌법 4조를 위반했다고 판결했습니다. Carpenter 이전에 정부 기관은 정보가 조사의 일부로 필요하다고 주장하여 휴대폰 위치 기록을 얻을 수 있었습니다. Carpenter 이후에 정부 기관은 해당 정보에 액세스할 수 있는 영장을 받아야 합니다. 법원은 21세기의 기술 혁명이 인간 행동에 미친 근본적인 변화를 인식하고 대신 이러한 유형의 데이터에서 개인의 헌법적 권리에 대한 확장된 vision을 수용했습니다. 그러나 법원의 판결은 매우 협소했으며 위치 정보가 우연히 노출될 수 있는 사업 기록과 관련된 제3자의 원칙을 변경하거나 보안 카메라와 같은 기존의 감시 기술 및 도구에 관한 이전 결정을 번복하지는 않았습니다. 법원은 실시간 CSLI를 포함하여 Carpenter에 표시되지 않은 휴대폰과 관련된 다른 문제에 대한 판결을 확장하지도 않았습니다. 외교나 국가 안보와 관련된 다른 수집 기법도 고려하지는 않았습니다.
[1] Carpenter v. United States, No. 16-402, 585 U.S. ____ (2018), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case concerning the privacy of historical cell site location information (CSLI). The Court held, in a 5–4 decision authored by Chief Justice Roberts, that the government violates the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution by accessing historical CSLI records containing the physical locations of cellphones without a search warrant. Prior to Carpenter, government entities could obtain cellphone location records by claiming the information was required as part of an investigation. After Carpenter, government entities are required to obtain a warrant to access that information. Recognizing the fundamental shift that the technological revolution of the 21st century had wrought on human behavior, the Court instead embraced an expanded vision of individual constitutional rights in this type of data. However, the Court's ruling was very narrow and did not otherwise change the third-party doctrine related to other business records that might incidentally reveal location information, nor overrule prior decisions concerning conventional surveillance techniques and tools such as security cameras. The Court did not expand its ruling on other matters related to cellphones not presented in Carpenter, including real-time CSLI or "tower dumps" (a download of information about all the devices that connected to a particular cell site during a particular interval). The opinion also did not consider other collection techniques involving foreign affairs or national security. Carpenter v. United States, Wikipedia
[2] 3년 전 대법원은 디지털 시대에 미국인의 프라이버시 권리를 재확인하는 판결을 내렸습니다. 법원은 오랫동안 수정헌법 제4조가 전화 회사를 포함하여 다른 사람에게 자발적으로 공개하는 정보를 보호하지 않는다고 주장해 왔습니다. 그러나 경찰이 휴대폰 회사에 전자제품 가게를 횡령한 것으로 의심되는 고객의 정확한 위치 정보를 몇 주 동안 넘겨주도록 강요했을 때 법원은 위치 정보를 사용하여 개인의 습관 및 신념을 결정할 수 있다는 점에 주목하면서 Carpenter v. United States 사건에서 정부가 기업이 그러한 민감한 데이터를 생성하도록 강제하려면 영장이 필요하다고 판결했습니다. 정부 기관은 민감한 위치 정보에 대한 강력한 헌법적 보호를 우회하는 방법을 발견했으며, 미국인의 개인 정보를 구매하기 위해 비밀리에 법의 허점을 이용하고 있습니다. 미국인의 데이터를 구매하는 이러한 관행은 일상적이 되었으며, 의회에서 제정한 개인 정보 보호 장치를 무효화했습니다. 표면적으로는 정부가 영장 없이 데이터 브로커로부터 위치 정보를 획득하는 것은 Carpenter를 위반하는 것처럼 보입니다. 하지만 정부 기관은 정부가 기업에 데이터를 넘기도록 강제할 때만 해당 사례를 적용하는 것으로 해석하고 있으며, 이러한 관점에서 정부는 범죄피의자의 위치기록뿐만 아니라 범죄수사와 무관한 위치정보 데이터베이스 전체를 헌법상 매입할 수 있게 됩니다. 이 해석은 법적 문제에 취약하며, 법원이 문제를 해결하는 데 몇 년이 걸릴 수 있습니다. 따라서 수정헌법 4조는 당분간 부적절하게 다루어질 수 있으며, 우리는 미국인의 사생활을 보호하기 위해 의회가 통과한 법률에 의존해야 합니다. 불행히도 이러한 법률도 기술을 따라가지 못하면서 많은 힘을 잃었습니다.
가장 관련성이 높은 법령인 Electronic Communications Privacy Act는 1986년 제정된 이후 의미 있게 개정되지 않았습니다. 이것은 특정 유형의 통신 및 컴퓨터 서비스를 제공하는 회사의 데이터 공개를 제한합니다. 하지만, 많은 앱 개발자들이 당시에는 존재하지 않았던 서비스를 제공하기 때문에 법이 그들에게 적용되지는 않습니다. 이러한 회사는 수요와 공급의 법칙에 따라 획득할 수 있는 모든 정보를 자유롭게 판매할 수 있습니다. 이 법은 전화 회사와 인터넷 서비스 제공업체에 적용되며, 정부 기관에 미국인의 개인 정보를 자발적으로 공개하는 것을 금지합니다. 그러나 의회는 디지털 데이터 브로커의 현상을 예측하지는 못했습니다. 많은 유형의 정보에 대해 법에는 비정부 기관에 데이터를 공개하는 것을 금지하는 금지 조항이 없기 때문입니다. 이 결과, 전화 및 인터넷 회사는 중개인에게 정보를 판매할 수 있으며, 브로커는 동일한 정보를 정부에 재판매하여 본질적으로 중개인을 통해 미국인의 데이터를 세탁할 수 있게 된 것입니다. 정부는 이러한 해결 방법을 최대한 활용했습니다. 미국인의 휴대전화 위치 정보를 구매하고 사용한 연방 기관에는 국세청, 마약단속국, FBI, 국토안보부, 국방부가 있으며, 주 및 지방 법 집행 기관도 데이터 공급업체로부터 소셜 미디어 사용자에 대한 정보를 구매하는 것이 적발되었습니다.
프라이버시 외에도 이 현상은 시민권 문제를 제기합니다. 정부 공무원이 범죄 활동의 가능한 원인을 보여주지 않아도 되거나 판사에게 정보를 전혀 제공할 필요가 없을 때, 그들은 유색인종 및 기타 소외된 커뮤니티를 대상으로 의식적 또는 잠재의식적 편견에 빠질 가능성이 훨씬 더 높기 때문입니다. 지난 11월, Vice News는 국방부가 미국인을 포함하여 전 세계적으로 9,800만 명이 사용하는 인기 있는 무슬림 데이트 어플에서 생성된 유사한 데이터를 구매했다는 사실을 발견했습니다. 위치 데이터를 사용하여 인종 차별에 반대하는 시위에 참석했거나 특정 모스크에 참석한 사람들을 식별할 수 있습니다. 그리고 현재까지 알려진 대부분의 구매는 지리적 위치 정보와 관련되어 있지만 앱은 연락처 목록, 사용자 프로필에서 제공되는 인구 통계 정보 또는 웨어러블 장치에서 수집한 건강 데이터와 같이 판매 대상이 될 수 있는 다른 동일한 개인 정보를 수집할 수 있습니다. 정보가 사용자의 신원과 명시적으로 연결되지 않을 수 있지만 정부가 데이터 집합을 소유자와 일치시키는 것은 마치, 어린아이의 장난과 같은 일입니다. 18명의 상원의원은 이러한 관행을 종식시키는 "수정헌법 제4조 판매 금지법(The Four Amendment Is Not For Sale Act)"이라는 법안을 발의했습니다. 법 집행 기관과 정보기관이 미국인의 지리적 위치 데이터, 통신 내용 또는 기타 민감한 정보를 수집하는 회사(휴대폰 회사, 앱 개발자 또는 데이터 브로커)로부터 구매하는 것을 금지합니다. 법안은 강화될 수 있습니다. 왜냐하면, 이 법은 데이터 구매만 금지하기 때문에 앱 개발자와 데이터 브로커가 영장이나 지불 없이 민감한 데이터를 정부 기관에 공개할 수 있는 작지만 중요한 허점이 있기 때문입니다. 그럼에도 불구하고 이 법안은 주요 문제를 식별하고 해결하는 데 많은 도움이 됩니다. 기술의 발전은 수정헌법 4조의 보호를 약화시켰을 뿐만 아니라 개인 정보 보호법에 큰 차이를 만들었습니다. 그러나 대법원은 비록 많은 개인 정보가 회사의 손에 있지만, 그것으로 인해 헌법상의 개인 정보 보호 권리를 박탈당하지 않는다는 점을 분명히 했습니다. 정부가 이러한 권리를 사들이는 것을 방지하려면 앱 시대에 대한 개인 정보 보호 규칙을 다시 작성해야 할 것입니다.
[2] Three years ago, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that appeared to reaffirm Americans’ right to privacy in the digital age. The court had long held that the Fourth Amendment does not protect information we voluntarily disclose to others — including to phone companies (this encompasses, by the court’s definition of “voluntary,” the numbers we call). But when police tried to force a cellphone company to turn over several weeks’ worth of precise location information for a customer they suspected of robbing electronics stores, the court said that was a bridge too far. Noting that location information can be used to determine a person’s associations, habits and even beliefs, the court ruled, in Carpenter v. United States, that the government needs a warrant to compel companies to produce such sensitive data. Government agencies — as several publications have reported — have discovered ways around what seemed to be robust constitutional protections for sensitive location information. They are engaging in creative legal interpretations and secretly exploiting gaps in the law to buy Americans’ personal information from intermediaries. This practice of buying Americans’ data has become routine, effectively hollowing out both Carpenter and privacy safeguards enacted by Congress. On its face, the government’s obtaining location information from data brokers without a warrant would seem to violate Carpenter. But government agencies have interpreted the case to apply only when the government forces a company to turn over data. Under this view, the government may constitutionally buy not only the location records of criminal suspects but also entire databases of location information unrelated to any criminal investigation. This interpretation is certainly vulnerable to legal challenge, but it could be years before the courts resolve the issue. The Fourth Amendment is therefore sidelined for the time being, and so we must rely on the laws that Congress has passed to protect Americans’ privacy. Unfortunately, these laws, too, have lost much of their force, having entirely failed to keep up with technology.
The most relevant statute, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, has not been meaningfully updated since its enactment in 1986. It limits data disclosures by companies that provide certain types of communications and computing services — those that were available when Congress wrote the law. Because many app developers provide services that didn’t exist at the time, the law simply doesn’t apply to them. These companies are therefore free to sell whatever information they can acquire, subject only to the law of supply and demand. The law does apply to phone companies and Internet services providers, and it prohibits them from voluntarily disclosing Americans’ personal information to government agencies. But Congress failed to foresee the phenomenon of digital data brokers. For many types of information, the law contains no bar against divulging the data to nongovernment entities. Phone and Internet companies can thus sell the information to brokers, which can resell the same information to the government, essentially laundering Americans’ data through a middleman. The government has taken full advantage of these workarounds. Federal agencies that have bought and used Americans’ cellphone location information include the Internal Revenue Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI, the Homeland Security and the Defense Department. State and local law enforcement have also been caught buying information about social media users from data vendors.
Besides privacy red flags, this phenomenon raises civil rights concerns. When government officials don’t have to show probable cause of criminal activity — or provide any information at all to a judge — they’re much more likely to fall back on conscious or subconscious prejudices, targeting people of color and other marginalized communities. Last November, Vice News discovered that the Defense Department had been purchasing “granular location data” harvested from a popular Muslim prayer app used by 98 million people around the world, including Americans, as well as similar data generated by a Muslim dating app. Location data can be used to identify people who attended a Black Lives Matter protest to oppose racial injustices or who attend a specific mosque. And while most of the known purchases to date have involved geolocation information, apps can gather other equally personal information that could be subject to sale, such as contact lists, demographic information available from user profiles or even health data gleaned from wearable devices. The information may not be explicitly linked to the user’s identity, but it is child’s play for the government to match a set of data to its owner. Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and 18 other senators introduced a bill last week, dubbed “The Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act,” that would end these practices. It would bar law enforcement and intelligence agencies from purchasing Americans’ geolocation data, the content of their communications or other sensitive information from any company that collects them — whether a cellphone company, an app developer or a data broker. The bill could be strengthened. Because it prohibits only data purchases, it leaves a small but important loophole for app developers and data brokers to disclose sensitive data to government agencies without a warrant or payment. The legislation nonetheless identifies a major problem and goes a long way toward solving it. Advances in technology have eroded Fourth Amendment protections as well as created major gaps in our privacy laws. The Supreme Court has made clear, however, that we don’t forfeit our constitutional privacy rights simply because so much of our personal information lies in the hands of companies. To prevent the government from buying its away around those rights, we need to rewrite privacy rules for the age of apps.
The government can’t seize your digital data. Except by buying it.,Washington Post, April 26, 2021
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