Expectation of privacy

Expectation of privacy is a legal test which is crucial in defining the scope of the applicability of the privacy protections of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. It is related to, but is not the same as, a right to privacy, a much broader concept which is found in many legal systems (see privacy law). Expectation of privacy is a legal test which is crucial in defining the scope of the applicability of the privacy protections of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. It is related to, but is not the same as, a right to privacy, a much broader concept which is found in many legal systems (see privacy law). There are two types of expectations of privacy: Examples of places where a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy are a person's residence or hotel room, and public places which have been specifically provided by businesses or the public sector in order to ensure privacy, such as public restrooms, private portions of jailhouses, or a phone booth. In general, one cannot have a reasonable expectation of privacy for things put into a public space. There are no privacy rights in garbage left for collection in a public place. Other examples include: pen registers that record the numbers dialed from particular telephones; conversations with others, though there could be a Sixth Amendment violation if the police send an individual to question a defendant who has already been formally charged; a person's physical characteristics, such as voice and handwriting; what is observed pursuant to aerial surveillance that is conducted in public navigable airspace not using equipment that unreasonably enhances the surveying government official's vision; anything in open fields (e.g., a barn); smells that can be detected by the use of a drug-sniffing dog during a routine traffic stop, even if the government official did not have probable cause or reasonable suspicion to suspect that drugs were present in the defendant's vehicle; and paint scrapings on the outside of a vehicle. While a person may have a subjective expectation of privacy in his/her car, it is not always an objective one, unlike a person's home. The expectation of privacy is crucial to distinguishing a legitimate, reasonable police search and seizure from an unreasonable one. A 'search' occurs for purposes of the Fourth Amendment when the Government violates a person's 'reasonable expectation of privacy.' In Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967) Justice Harlan issued a concurring opinion articulating the two-prong test later adopted by the U.S. Supreme Court as the test for determining whether a police or government search is subject to the limitations of the Fourth Amendment: To meet the first part of the test, the person from whom the information was obtained must demonstrate that they, in fact, had an actual, subjective expectation that the evidence obtained would not be available to the public. In other words, the person asserting that a search was conducted must show that they kept the evidence in a manner designed to ensure its privacy. The first part of the test is related to the notion 'in plain view'. If a person did not undertake reasonable efforts to conceal something from a casual observer (as opposed to a snoop), then no subjective expectation of privacy is assumed.