“We are rapidly entering the age of no privacy, where everyone is open to surveillance at all times; where there are no secrets from government. The aggressive breaches of privacy by the Government increase by geometric proportions.”

Osborn v. United States, 385 U.S. 323, 87 S.Ct. 429, 439, 17 L.Ed.2d 394) (1966) (Douglas dissenting), Hoffa v. United States, 385 U.S. 293, 87 S.Ct. 408, 17 L.Ed.2d 374 (1966) (concurring in part with Clark), Lewis v. United States, 385 U.S. 206, 87 S.Ct. 424, 17 L.Ed.2d 312 (1966) (dissenting).

He said that dissenting and concurring in part in three cases decided together on December 12, 1966. And Osborn wasn’t even a Fourth Amendment case; the others were. Osborn was an entrapment case involving attempted bribery of a juror in the upcoming Jimmy Hoffa trial. In Osborn, a law enforcement officer moonlighting as a private investigator had criminal defense lawyer Osborn inquire about getting to a potential juror who happened to be related to the officer. Rightly concerned, the officer told the FBI who contacted a district court judge, and then two district judges authorized wiring the officer with a recorder to capture the conversation so there would be no credibility contest on what was going to be said (which the Court happened to mention was “particular” in its scope).

Douglas’s complaints were real but seem quaint by today’s tech standards and development in the law. By the late 1980s, drug task forces here were videoing drug transactions when they were invited in for the drug deal.

This isn’t remembered like Brandeis’s “For good or ill will” about “government becomes a lawbreaker” quote in dissent in Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 485, 48 S. Ct. 564, 72 L. Ed. 2d 944 (1928), but still …. That was 57 years ago, and he saw something coming faster than we did.*
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*Just FYI, the automobile exception is 99 years old this year. Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 45 S. Ct. 280, 69 L. Ed. 2d 543 (1925).