Olmstead v. United States

The Court held that, absent an intrusion onto the defendant’s property, no search occurred. While this definition of search would be expanded in the Katz decision, at the time of the Olmstead ruling, no search occurred unless the government intruded into the defendant’s person, home, papers or personal effects. The officers in this instance took special care not to intrude onto the defendant’s property, so, under the
only definition of a search at that time, the officers were permitted to listen to the defendant’s telephone conversations. Interestingly, the Court wrote “[C]ongress may of course protect the secrecy of telephone messages by making them, when intercepted, inadmissible in evidence in federal criminal trials, by direct legislation, and thus depart from the common law of evidence.” Congress did so in Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968.