“The progress of science in furnishing the
Government with means of espionage is not likely to stop with wire-tapping.
Ways may someday be developed by which the Government, without removing papers
from secret drawers, can reproduce them in court, and by which it will be
enabled to expose to a jury the most intimate occurrences of the home. Advances
in the psychic and related sciences may bring means of exploring unexpressed
beliefs, thoughts and emotions…. Can it be that the Constitution affords no
protection against such invasions of individual security?”—Louis Brandeis, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court,
dissenting opinion in Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S.
438 (1928)
(The accompanying photograph of Justice Brandeis,
ca. 1916, by Harris & Ewing, comes from the Library of Congress Prints and
Photographs Division.)
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