The Fourth Amendment was designed not merely to protect against official intrusions whose social utility was less as measured by some `balancing test' than its intrusion on individual privacy; it was designed in addition to grant the individual a zone of privacy whose protections could be breached only where the `reasonable' requirements of the probable-cause standard were met. Moved by whatever momentary evil has aroused their fears, officials - perhaps even supported by a majority of citizens - may be tempted to conduct searches that sacrifice the liberty of each citizen to assuage the perceived evil. But the Fourth Amendment rests on the principle that a true balance between the individual and society depends on the recognition of `the right to be let alone - the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.' Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 478 (1928) (Brandeis, J., dissenting).

Government surveillance undermines freedom because it is natural to hesitate to exercise freedom when the government is watching and recording.

Most Americans don't want the government to know of their personal behavior; not because we have anything to hide, but because we don't live in the former East Germany or the old Soviet Union; because government in a free society is supposed to serve the people, not spy on them; because without probable cause, without some demonstrable evidence of some personal criminal behavior, the Constitution declares that our personal lives are none of the government's business.

Without fidelity to the Constitution, there is no privacy, and without privacy there is nothing to prevent the government from breaking down doors in the night—under the guise of national security—and taking whatever or whomever it wants.

I will govern my life and my thoughts as if all the world were to see the one and to read the other; for what does it signify to make anything a secret to my neighbor, when to God all our privacies are open?

First, adults need to understand, and our children should be taught, that private choices are not private; they all have public consequences.

There is a popular notion that doing our own thing or doing what feels good is our own business and affects no one but us. The deadly scourges that are epidemic all over the world have flourished in the context of this popular notion. But this is simply not true.

All immoral behavior directly impacts society. Even innocent people are affected. Drug and alcohol abuse have public consequences, as do illegitimacy, pornography, and obscenity. The public cost in human life and tax dollars for these so-called private choices is enormous: poverty, crime, a less-educated work force, and mounting demands for government spending to fix problems that cannot be fixed by money. It simply is not true that our private conduct is our own business. Our society is the sum total of what millions of individuals do in their private lives. That sum total of private behavior has worldwide public consequences of enormous magnitude. There are no completely private choices.