Katz v. United States

In the late 1960s Charles Katz was accused of illegally gambling over the phone from Los Angeles to Miami and Boston. The FBI made this discovery through tapping into Katz’s phone calls as he made them from a public telephone booth. The agents conducted this search without a warrant and the transcripts were used to prosecute Katz. Katz and his legal team argued that the phone booth was a “constitutionally protected area” and therefore the transcripts could not been admissible as evidence. This defense was used based on the precedent set by the 1965 case, Griswold v. Connecticut which enforced the right to privacy and the necessity of a search warrant. Similarly to Griswold, the prosecution argued that this right only applies when an individual’s space is “physically penetrated.” Since the FBI agents were outside the phone booth, this did not apply (Katz v. United States (1967), 484).

 

The primary legal questions the Court faced were, should phone booths and similar public places be protected by the Fourth Amendment right to privacy, and does only “physical penetration” require a search warrant. The Court voted 7-1 in defense of Charles Katz. Stewart wrote the concurring opinion which, in essence, states that tapping into a phone conversation is a search and requires a warrant. I found the strongest argument presented by Justice Stewart to be the “reasonable expectation of privacy.” Stewart, and later Harlan, explain that although the phone booth may have been made of glass and in the public eye, it was a private space within that moment. Katz entered with the expectation that he had privacy and cared only if people heard this conversation, not if they watched it occur from outside the booth. I also agree with the majority opinion, in that the conversations should of been tapped due to the illegal actions occurring, but this requires a warrant. All American citizens have the right to their own private conversations, as long as they are not threatening to the population as a whole. Despite this case occurring in the 1960s, we still face controversies with the legality of wiretapping to this very day (Katz v. United States (1967), 485-487).

 

At first glance, I find some strong points in Justice Black’s dissent. Specifically, the analogy of tapping phone conversations to eavesdropping. Technically, these two actions are closely related. However, I believe it is instances such as these that prove why we need to have Supreme Court cases to make modern adjustments to the Founding Fathers original ideas. Tapping differs from eavesdropping in that tangible evidence can be produced from a phone call but not from overhearing a conversation. However, because this technological concept was unthinkable during the 1700s, there would be no need to make any mention of evidence that is not entirely physical (Katz v. United States, 487-488). Therefore, I stand with the majority in the decision that Katz’s Fourth Amendment rights to privacy were violated by the FBI’s tapping of his phone calls.