In Katz v. United States, Charles Kats used a public telephone to phone-in illegal gambling bets. However, while placing these bets, Katz did not realize that the government was listening to his conversation. The FBI could listen to Katz place illegal bets because the agency tapped that specific phone. Following the recorded conversations, Katz was arrested and immediately taken into custody by the FBI. In response to the arrest, Charles Katz said the police had violated his rights as an American citizen; he claimed the FBI disrupted his right of privacy. he United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of Katz, stating that the Police Department and the FBI violated his right to privacy. This right is expressed in the 4th Amendment to the United …show more content…
In Olmstead v. California, the court set forth the trespass doctrine for fourth amendment protection the doctrine was based on the concept that that the fourth amendment protects “persons, houses, papers, and effects” when these entities were located within a “constitutionally protected area.” However, in the Katz v. United States case, Justice Stewarts opinion he stated that the trespass doctrine could no longer be regarded as controlling because the trespass doctrine was no longer the exclusive test. Significantly the majority opinion in Katz declared that the fourth amendment "protects individual privacy against certain kinds of governmental intrusion, but its protections go further, and often have nothing to do with privacy at all." The fourth amendment also protects a citizen 's sense of dignity and his right of personal security. The Government 's activities in electronically listening to and recording the petitioner 's words violated the privacy upon which he justifiably relied while using the telephone booth and thus constituted a "search and seizure" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. The fact that the electronic device employed to achieve that end did not happen to penetrate the wall of the booth can have no constitutional