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United States v. United States District Court
open-in-new
<h2 id="the-decision">The decision</h2> <p>The Supreme Court upheld the prior rulings in the case, holding that the wiretaps were an unconstitutional violation of the Fourth Amendment and as such must be disclosed to the defense. This established the precedent that a warrant needed to be obtained before beginning electronic surveillance even if domestic security issues were involved. Note that the decision applied only to domestic issues; foreign intelligence operations were not bound by the same standards. The governing law for electronic surveillance of "foreign intelligence information" between or among "foreign powers" is the <a href="/facts/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act_of_1978/L3QvUyIS">Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978</a>. </p> <h2 id="quotations">Quotations</h2> <ul><li>"The price of lawful public dissent must not be a dread of subjection to an unchecked surveillance power. Nor must the fear of unauthorized official eavesdropping deter vigorous citizen dissent and discussion of Government action in private conversation. For private dissent, no less than open public discourse, is essential to our free society."; <a href="/facts/Lewis_Franklin_Powell_Jr./YgUFIEpj">Lewis Powell</a>, writing for the Majority.</li> <li>"As I read it—and this is my fear—we are saying that the President, on his motion, could declare—name your favorite poison—draft dodgers, Black Muslims, the Ku Klux Klan, or civil rights activists to be a clear and present danger to the structure or existence of the Government."; <a href="/facts/U.S._Senator/VyzXHE01">Senator</a> <a href="/facts/Philip_A._Hart/8LfPp6wH">Philip A. Hart</a>, quoted by <a href="/facts/Lewis_Franklin_Powell_Jr./YgUFIEpj">Lewis Powell</a>, writing for the Majority.</li> <li>"History abundantly documents the tendency of Government—however benevolent and benign its motives—to view with suspicion those who most fervently dispute its policies. Fourth Amendment protections become the more necessary when the targets of official surveillance may be those suspected of unorthodoxy in their political beliefs. The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect "domestic security." Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent."; <a href="/facts/Lewis_Franklin_Powell_Jr./YgUFIEpj">Lewis Powell</a>, writing for the Majority.</li> <li>"This is an important phase in the campaign of the police and intelligence agencies to obtain exemptions from the Warrant Clause of the Fourth Amendment. For, due to the clandestine nature of electronic eaves-dropping, the need is acute for placing on the Government the heavy burden to show that "exigencies of the situation [make its] course imperative." Other abuses, such as the search incident to arrest, have been partly deterred by the threat of damage actions against offending officers, the risk of adverse publicity, or the possibility of reform through the political process. These latter safeguards, however, are ineffective against lawless wiretapping and "bugging" of which their victims are totally unaware. Moreover, even the risk of exclusion of tainted evidence would here appear to be of negligible deterrent value inasmuch as the United States frankly concedes that the primary purpose of these searches is to fortify its intelligence collage rather than to accumulate evidence to support indictments and convictions. If the Warrant Clause were held inapplicable here, then the federal intelligence machine would literally enjoy unchecked discretion."; <a href="/facts/William_O._Douglas/kk5Xumy3">William O. Douglas</a>, in a concurring opinion.</li> <li>"Here, federal agents wish to rummage for months on end through every conversation, no matter how intimate or personal, carried over selected telephone lines, simply to seize those few utterances which may add to their sense of the pulse of a domestic underground."; <a href="/facts/William_O._Douglas/kk5Xumy3">William O. Douglas</a>, in a concurring opinion.</li> <li>"We are told that one national security wiretap lasted for 14 months and monitored over 900 conversations. Senator Edward Kennedy found recently that ‘warrantless devices accounted for an average of 78 to 209 days of listening per device, as compared with a 13-day per device average for those devices installed under court order.’ He concluded that the Government's revelations posed ‘the frightening possibility that the conversations of untold thousands of citizens of this country are being monitored on secret devices which no judge has authorized and which may remain in operation for months and perhaps years at a time.’ Even the most innocent and random caller who uses or telephones into a tapped line can become a flagged number in the Government's data bank."; <a href="/facts/William_O._Douglas/kk5Xumy3">William O. Douglas</a>, in a concurring opinion.</li></ul> <h2 id="see-also">See also</h2> <ul><li><a href="/facts/Richard_Nixon/HS8uXAoC">Richard Nixon</a></li> <li><a href="/facts/John_N._Mitchell/t7bGxnM3">John N. Mitchell</a></li> <li><a href="/facts/Telephone_tapping/9A549jmn">Telephone tapping</a></li> <li><a href="/facts/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act_of_1978/L3QvUyIS">Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978</a></li> <li><i><a href="/facts/ACLU_v._NSA/U7pyFkkW">ACLU v. NSA</a></i> (6th Cir. 2007)</li> <li><a href="/facts/List_of_United_States_Supreme_Court_cases%2c_volume_407/soMRH4el">List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 407</a></li></ul> <h2 id="external-links">External links</h2> <ul><li> Works related to United States v. United States District Court at Wikisource</li> <li>Text of <i>United States v. U.S. District Court</i>, <a href="/facts/List_of_United_States_Supreme_Court_cases%2c_volume_407/soMRH4el">407</a> <a href="/facts/United_States_Reports/evJp9YUQ">U.S.</a> 297 (1972) is available from: <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/407/297">Cornell</a> <a href="https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/407/297.html">Findlaw</a> <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/407/297/">Justia</a> <a href="http://cdn.loc.gov/service/ll/usrep/usrep407/usrep407297/usrep407297.pdf">Library of Congress</a> <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1971/70-153">Oyez (oral argument audio)</a> </li> <li><a href="http://lsr.nellco.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1047&context=columbia_pllt">The Story of the United States vs. United States District Court (Keith): The Surveillance Power</a></li> <li><a href="https://aadl.org/freeingjohnsinclair/essays/peoples_history_of_the_cia_bombing_conspiracy">[1]</a> A People's History of the CIA Bombing Conspiracy (the Keith Case) by Buck Davis</li></ul> <h2 id="references">References</h2> <ol> <li id="fn:1"><p>"Hugh M. Davis Jr. Papers" (PDF). Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University. Retrieved December 11, 2015. <a href="http://reuther.wayne.edu/files/UP001881.pdf" target="_blank">http://reuther.wayne.edu/files/UP001881.pdf</a> <a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:2"><p>Conyers, John (May 14, 2003). "Damon Keith -- Guardian of the Constitution". Congressional Record: E960 – E961. Retrieved December 11, 2015. <a href="http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2003_cr/s051503.html" target="_blank">http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2003_cr/s051503.html</a> <a href="#fnref:2" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:3"><p>United States v. Sinclair, 321 F. Supp. 1074 (E.D. Mich. 1971). <a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/321/1074/2597112/" target="_blank">https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/321/1074/2597112/</a> <a href="#fnref:3" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:4"><p>United States v. United States District Court, 444 F.2d 651 (6th Cir. 1971). <a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/444/651/340959/" target="_blank">https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/444/651/340959/</a> <a href="#fnref:4" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> </ol>