Privacy: A Personal Sphere, Not Home-Bound

“[T]he Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected.” So stated the Supreme Court majority in Katz v. United States 1 in 1969. This chapter builds on this statement and attempts to show that it has generally gone unheeded in Fourth Amendment case law since 1969, and that sweeping and significant technological advances mean that the statement is more valuable than ever. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.