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e Approved For Release 2008/11/06: CIA-RDP04M01816R000502010009-4 - 29 - The expectation of privacy in the contents of int~nal mail therefore cannot easily be equated to-the expectation of privacy in domestic mail. No cases have dealt with the surreptitious opening of international mail to gather foreign intelligence or counterintelligence information, but there is a close analogy in the interception of wire communications. In neither case is property taken; in neither case is a person But in both cases 1· private communications are intercepted, and the constitutional delayed or physically inconvenienced. question becomes whether this intrusion must be authorized in advance in a specified way. The Supreme Court's first constitutional decision concerning wire interceptions was Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, which was handed down in 1928. Olmstead held I \ that telephone conversations could be overheard without prior judicial approval. The Court set out two major rationales for its holding; first, that the interception of wire communications does not "seize" anything within the meaning of the Fourth Amend- ment because there is no physical trespass and it does not prevent the parties from conversing; second, that the Fourth Amendment does not reach beyond the home or office to the whole world into which conmrunications may be sent. Under the standards of Olmstead, which was the law when the CIA A roved For Release 2008/11/06: CIA-RDP04M01816R000502010009-4