Chatrie v. United States · ¶101

Nor does it matter that those who wrote the Fourth Amendment might not have imagined an electronic diary or map of one’s travels. As with other laws, the terms found in the Fourth Amendment carry their original public meaning and can bear more applications than its drafters might have expected or intended. See id., at 400. So just as the First Amendment protects speech over the internet today no less than it did speech delivered in the town square in 1791, it should hardly come as a surprise that the Fourth Amendment might protect as personal “effects” electronic diaries of one’s travels as it always has more traditional ones. See Kyllo v. United States, 533 U. S. 27, 40 (2001) (observing that a “search” of a home can take place not just by physical entry but also by the external use of thermal- imaging devices).

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