Cite as: 529 U. S. 334 (2000)
Breyer, J., dissenting
(1967) (Harlan, J., concurring)). Privacy itself implies the exclusion of uninvited strangers, not just strangers who work for the Government. Hence, an individual cannot reasonably expect privacy in respect to objects or activities that he "knowingly exposes to the public." Id., at 351.
Indeed, the Court has said that it is not objectively reasonable to expect privacy if "[a]ny member of the public . . . could have" used his senses to detect "everything that th[e] officers observed." California v. Ciraolo, 476 U. S. 207, 213-214 (1986). Thus, it has held that the fact that strangers may look down at fenced-in property from an aircraft or sift through garbage bags on a public street can justify a similar police intrusion. See ibid.; Florida v. Riley, 488 U. S. 445, 451 (1989) (plurality opinion); California v. Green-wood, 486 U. S. 35, 40-41 (1988); cf. Texas v. Brown, 460 U. S. 730, 740 (1983) (police not precluded from " 'ben[ding] down' " to see since "[t]he general public could peer into the interior of [the car] from any number of angles"). The comparative likelihood that strangers will give bags in an overhead compartment a hard squeeze would seem far greater. See Riley, supra, at 453 (O'Connor, J., concurring in judgment) (reasonableness of privacy expectation depends on whether intrusion is a "sufficiently routine part of modern life"). Consider, too, the accepted police practice of using dogs to sniff for drugs hidden inside luggage. See, e. g., United States v. Place, 462 U. S. 696, 699 (1983). Surely it is less likely that nongovernmental strangers will sniff at another's bags (or, more to the point, permit their dogs to do so) than it is that such actors will touch or squeeze another person's belongings in the process of making room for their own.
Of course, the agent's purpose here—searching for drugs—differs dramatically from the intention of a driver or fellow passenger who squeezes a bag in the process of making more room for another parcel. But in determining whether an expectation of privacy is reasonable, it is the effect, not the purpose, that matters. See ante, at 338, n. 2
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