Cite as: 532 U. S. 514 (2001)
Opinion of the Court
York's broadly written statute authorizing the police to conduct wiretaps violated the Fourth Amendment. Largely in response to that decision, and to our holding in Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347 (1967), that the attachment of a listening and recording device to the outside of a telephone booth constituted a search, "Congress undertook to draft comprehensive legislation both authorizing the use of evidence obtained by electronic surveillance on specified conditions, and prohibiting its use otherwise. S. Rep. No. 1097, 90th Cong., 2d Sess., 66 (1968)." Gelbard v. United States, 408 U. S. 41, 78 (1972) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting). The ultimate result of those efforts was Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, 82 Stat. 211, entitled Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance.
One of the stated purposes of that title was "to protect effectively the privacy of wire and oral communications." Ibid. In addition to authorizing and regulating electronic surveillance for law enforcement purposes, Title III also regulated private conduct. One part of those regulations, § 2511(1), defined five offenses punishable by a fine of not more than $10,000, by imprisonment for not more than five years, or by both. Subsection (a) applied to any person who "willfully intercepts . . . any wire or oral communication." Subsection (b) applied to the intentional use of devices designed to intercept oral conversations; subsection (d) applied to the use of the contents of illegally intercepted wire or
1997, less than 100 cases were prosecuted charging violations of 18 U. S. C. § 2511. See Statement of James K. Kallstrom, Assistant Director in Charge of the New York Division of the FBI on February 5, 1997 before the Subcommittee on Telecommunications, Trade, and Consumer Protection, Committee on Commerce, U. S. House of Representatives Regarding Cellular Privacy. However, information concerning techniques and devices for intercepting cell and cordless phone calls can be found in a number of publications, trade magazines, and sites on the Internet, see id., at 6, and at one set of congressional hearings in 1997, a scanner, purchased off the shelf and minimally modified, was used to intercept phone calls of Members of Congress.
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