530
Opinion of the Court
conduct by a non-law-abiding third party. Although there are some rare occasions in which a law suppressing one party's speech may be justified by an interest in deterring criminal conduct by another, see, e. g., New York v. Ferber, 458 U. S. 747 (1982),13 this is not such a case.
With only a handful of exceptions, the violations of § 2511(1)(a) that have been described in litigated cases have been motivated by either financial gain or domestic disputes.14 In virtually all of those cases, the identity of the person or persons intercepting the communication has been known.15 Moreover, petitioners cite no evidence that Congress viewed the prohibition against disclosures as a response to the difficulty of identifying persons making improper use of scanners and other surveillance devices and accordingly of deterring such conduct,16 and there is no
13 In cases relying on such a rationale, moreover, the speech at issue is considered of minimal value. Osborne v. Ohio, 495 U. S. 103 (1990); New York v. Ferber, 458 U. S., at 762 ("The value of permitting live performances and photographic reproductions of children engaged in lewd sexual conduct is exceedingly modest, if not de minimis").
The Government also points to two other areas of the law—namely, mail theft and stolen property—in which a ban on the receipt or possession of an item is used to deter some primary illegality. Brief for United States 14; see also post, at 550-551 (Rehnquist, C. J., dissenting). Neither of those examples, though, involve prohibitions on speech. As such, they are not relevant to a First Amendment analysis.
14 The media respondents have included a list of 143 cases under § 2511(1)(a) and 63 cases under §§ 2511(1)(c) and (d)—which must also involve violations of subsection (a)—in an appendix to their brief. The Reply Brief filed by the United States contains an appendix describing each of the cases in the latter group.
15 In only 5 of the 206 cases listed in the appendixes, see n. 14, supra, n. 17, infra, was the identity of the interceptor wholly unknown.
16 The legislative history of the 1968 Act indicates that Congress' concern focused on private surveillance "in domestic relations and industrial espionage situations." S. Rep. No. 1097, 90th Cong., 2d Sess., 225 (1968). Similarly, in connection with the enactment of the 1986 amendment, one Senator referred to the interest in protecting private communications
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