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Opinion of the Court
wise reasonable within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.3 Id., at 878, 880.
We now consider that question in assessing the constitutionality of the search of Knights' apartment. The Government, advocating the approach of the Supreme Court of California, see Woods, supra, contends that the search satisfied the Fourth Amendment under the "consent" rationale of cases such as Zap v. United States, 328 U. S. 624 (1946), and Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U. S. 218 (1973). In the Government's view, Knights' acceptance of the search condition was voluntary because he had the option of rejecting probation and going to prison instead, which the Government argues is analogous to the voluntary decision defendants often make to waive their right to a trial and accept a plea bargain.4
We need not decide whether Knights' acceptance of the search condition constituted consent in the Schneckloth sense of a complete waiver of his Fourth Amendment rights, however, because we conclude that the search of Knights was reasonable under our general Fourth Amendment approach of "examining the totality of the circumstances," Ohio v. Robinette, 519 U. S. 33, 39 (1996), with the probation search condition being a salient circumstance.
The touchstone of the Fourth Amendment is reasonableness, and the reasonableness of a search is determined "by
3 The Wisconsin Supreme Court had held in Griffin that "probation diminishes a probationer's reasonable expectation of privacy—so that a probation officer may, consistent with the Fourth Amendment, search a probationer's home without a warrant, and with only 'reasonable grounds' (not probable cause) to believe that contraband is present." Id., at 872.
4 The Government sees our unconstitutional conditions doctrine as a limitation on what a probationer may validly consent to in a probation order. The Government argues that the search condition is not an unconstitutional condition because waiver of Fourth Amendment rights "directly furthers the State's interest in the effective administration of its probation system." Brief for United States 22.
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