[Spktyr]

That particular decision came about in a time where there were banks of human operators manually switching calls where they needed to go and they needed to be able to hear the caller and recipient to route the calls. Technically, that was a correct decision for the day as you *had* to have a third party listening in just to get many calls accomplished.

[Cboldt]

The business protocol then, as now (any call can be listened in to by a human) was the operator was going to disconnect herself. The rationale in Olmstead was that "the listening equipment was installed outside the houses involved," which was true then and is true now.

SCOTUS shift was the typical "blow with the political winds." The public and even Congress rejected the decision.

The United States takes no such care of telegraph or telephone messages as of mailed sealed letters. The Amendment does not forbid what was done here. There was no searching. There was no seizure. The evidence was secured by the use of the sense of hearing, and that only. There was no entry of the houses or offices of the defendants.

By the invention of the telephone fifty years ago and its application for the purpose of extending communications, one can talk with another at a far distant place. The language of the Amendment cannot be extended and expanded to include telephone wires reaching to the whole world from the defendant's house or office. The intervening wires are not part of his house or office any more than are the highways along which they are stretched.