Cite as: 524 U. S. 666 (1998)
Breyer, J., dissenting
dom," ibid. (Ginsburg, J., dissenting), and it is that conduct, not a foreign proceeding, that is at issue here.
B
If the policies and purposes that this Court has said underlie the Fifth Amendment—respect for individual dignity and privacy, prevention of governmental overreaching, preservation of an accusatorial system of criminal justice—would all be well served by applying the privilege when a witness legitimately fears foreign prosecution, then what reason could there be for reinterpreting the privilege so as not to recognize it here?
Two reasons have been suggested: First, one might see a government's compulsion of testimony followed by its own use of that testimony in a criminal prosecution as somewhat more unfair than compulsion by one government and use by another. And one might also find the States and the Federal Government so closely interconnected that the unfairness is further diminished where the prosecuting sovereign is a foreign country.
But this factor, in my view, cannot be determinative. For one thing, this issue of fairness is a matter of degree, not kind. For another, changes in transportation and communication have made relationships among nations ever closer, to the point where cooperation among international prosecutors and police forces may be as great today as among the States (or between the States and the Federal Government) a half century ago. See supra, at 714-715 (discussing rise in international cooperation). Finally, this Court's cases suggest that the remaining considerations—particularly the inherent indignity and cruelty to the individual in compelling self-incrimination—bulk larger in terms of the basic values that the Fifth Amendment reflects than does this single, partial, fairness consideration. See supra, at 712-713 (citing cases). I cannot agree that this particular feature—the fact that
717
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