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I think the point SC is trying to make is that while you're in public, FBI is free to follow you around all day long, thus tracking you in a way that you made p

I think the point SC is trying to make is that while you're in public, FBI is free to follow you around all day long, thus tracking you in a way that you made publicly available. However, bugging your car isn't something that you made explicitly available and therefore is violating your reasonable expectations of privacy. That said, this indeed makes it very interesting in online play. It's obvious that FBI shouldn't just hack into your computer and watch your every move. But, if they just happened to observe your unencrypted data bits and make sense out of them, that might still be legal. After all, that's just like watching where your car goes to every day.

karlshea 15y ago
Actually, the opinion says that this case doesn't have anything to do with "reasonable expectations of privacy" like the government contended originally. The court says that this was actually trespass. It's an interesting distinction, they made the decision not on Katz's "expectations of privacy" test, but instead on common-law trespass which the Fourth Amendment was based on. So this decision clarifies that the "expectations of privacy" test added to the Fourth Amendment's common-law origin, it didn't replace it. (page 4 of the opinion, page 6 of the pdf): http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/10-1259.pdf http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/10-1259.pdf