94
Scalia, J., dissenting
Under our established Fourth Amendment law, the last two contentions would not suffice, even without reference to the special-needs doctrine. The Court's analogizing of this case to Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436 (1966), and its claim that "standards of knowing waiver" apply, ante, at 85, are flatly contradicted by our jurisprudence, which shows that using lawfully (but deceivingly) obtained material for purposes other than those represented, and giving that material or information derived from it to the police, is not unconstitutional. In Hoffa v. United States, 385 U. S. 293 (1966), "[t]he argument [was] that [the informant's] failure to disclose his role as a government informant vitiated the consent that the petitioner gave" for the agent's access to evidence of criminal wrongdoing, id., at 300. We rejected that argument, because "the Fourth Amendment [does not protect] a wrongdoer's misplaced belief that a person to whom he voluntarily confides his wrongdoing will not reveal it." Id., at 302. Because the defendant had voluntarily provided access to the evidence, there was no reasonable expectation of privacy to invade. Abuse of trust is surely a sneaky and ungentlemanly thing, and perhaps there should be (as there are) laws against such conduct by the government. See, e. g., 50 U. S. C. § 403-7 (1994 ed., Supp. IV) (prohibiting the "Intelligence Community['s]" use of journalists as agents). That, however, is immaterial for Fourth Amendment purposes, for "however strongly a defendant may trust an apparent colleague, his expectations in this respect are not protected by the Fourth Amendment when it turns out that the colleague is a government agent regularly communicating with the authorities." United States v. White, 401 U. S. 745, 749 (1971) (emphasis added). The Hoffa line of cases, I may note, does not distinguish between operations meant to catch a criminal in the act, and those meant only to gather evidence of prior wrongdoing. See, e. g., United States v. Miller, 425 U. S. 435, 440-443 (1976); cf. Illinois v. Perkins, 496 U. S. 292, 298 (1990) (relying on Hoffa in holding the
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