The concept of privacy has various meanings. It depends on what point of view you use – legal, historical, philosophical etc. As a law student, I would of course equate privacy to the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures. We know that such will not be legal if it is not done upon a valid search warrant or warrant of arrest. It is then hard for me to imagine that a court would decide that wiretapping is not violative of a person’s privacy.
In Olmstead vs. United States, the US Supreme Court reviewed whether the use of wiretapped private telephone conversations, obtained by federal agents without judicial approval and subsequently used as evidence, constituted a violation of the defendant’s rights provided by the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. In a 5-4 decision, the Court held that neither the Fourth Amendment nor the Fifth Amendment rights of the defendant were violated. Apparently, speech could not be seized and a search cannot be conducted if the place where the wiretap is being received is far from the persons’ house. Granted, this case was decided in 1928. I guess we should be then grateful when it was reversed in 1967. In Katz vs. United States, the 1967 US Supreme Court extended the Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable searches and seizure to protect individuals in a telephone booth from wiretaps by authorizes without a warrant.
Our right to privacy (I think) largely depends on our relationship with the government. The notion takes into consideration social and political interactions such that its enforcement then becomes a merger between the person, the society and the government. Because of globalization and advances in technology, there is a need for a broader and a more flexible application of laws in order to address the ever changing needs of the people.
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