548
Rehnquist, C. J., dissenting
Communications, 435 U. S., at 837 ("We are not here concerned with the possible applicability of the statute to one who secures the information by illegal means and thereafter divulges it").5
Undaunted, the Court places an inordinate amount of weight upon the fact that the receipt of an illegally intercepted communication has not been criminalized. See ante, at 528-532. But this hardly renders those who knowingly receive and disclose such communications "law-abiding," ante, at 529, and it certainly does not bring them under the Daily Mail principle. The transmission of the intercepted communication from the eavesdropper to the third party is itself illegal; and where, as here, the third party then knowingly discloses that communication, another illegal act has been committed. The third party in this situation cannot be likened to the reporters in the Daily Mail cases, who lawfully obtained their information through consensual interviews or public documents.
These laws are content neutral; they only regulate information that was illegally obtained; they do not restrict republication of what is already in the public domain; they impose no special burdens upon the media; they have a sci-enter requirement to provide fair warning; and they promote the privacy and free speech of those using cellular telephones. It is hard to imagine a more narrowly tailored prohibition of the disclosure of illegally intercepted communications, and it distorts our precedents to review these statutes under the often fatal standard of strict scrutiny. These laws therefore should be upheld if they further a sub-5 Tellingly, we noted in Florida Star that "[t]o the extent sensitive information rests in private hands, the government may under some circumstances forbid its nonconsensual acquisition, thereby bringing outside of the Daily Mail principle the publication of any information so acquired." 491 U. S., at 534; see also id., at 535 ("[I]t is highly anomalous to sanction persons other than the source of [the] release").
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