Chatrie v. United States · ¶72

In his famed and vindicated dissent, Justice Brandeis explained why a wiretap was a search, subject to Fourth Amendment requirements. See Olmstead v. United States, 277 U. S. 438, 471 (1928). Those who drafted the Amendment could not have imagined such a technology. But they understood, Justice Brandeis wrote, a matter of more transcendent importance: that Americans had “as against the Government, the right to be let alone” and that the Fourth Amendment must protect against “every unjustifiable intrusion by the Government upon the privacy of the individual, whatever the means employed.” Id., at 478.

slip opinion
Source edition
Passage preview. Read in context for the complete text, notes and references.