What is the impact of the Fourth Amendment on the search and seizure of electronic communications?

It would not be possible to add to the emphasis with which the framers of our Constitution and this court have declared the importance to political liberty and to the welfare of our country of the due observance of the rights guaranteed under the Constitution by [the Fourth Amendment].... [S]uch rights are declared to be indispensable to the "full enjoyment of personal security, personal liberty and private property"; ... they are to be regarded as of the very essence of constitutional liberty.... [The] amendment should receive a liberal construction, so as to prevent stealthy encroachment upon or "gradual depreciation" of the rights secured by [it], by imperceptible practice of courts or by well-intentioned, but mistakenly overzealous, executive officers.

Gouled v. United States, 255 U.S. 298, 303-304, 41 S.Ct. 261, 263, 65 L.Ed. 647 (1921) (citations omitted).

[T]he mere fact that law enforcement may be made more efficient can never by itself justify disregard of the Fourth Amendment. The investigation of crime would always be simplified if warrants were unnecessary. But the Fourth Amendment reflects the view of those who wrote the Bill of Rights that the

Page 850

Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U.S. 385, 393, 98 S.Ct. 2408, 2414, 57 L.Ed.2d 290 (1978) (citations omitted).