Oct 9, 2026 · 18 min · 10 segments
When does government surveillance become a search? Attorney Erik Scramlin breaks down Katz v. United States, reasonable expectation of privacy, and what every officer needs to know about this landmark…
Erik ScramlinHost
Today, I'm gonna be breaking down what I often tell my students in class this is the most important case you got to know because we can't go and talk about advanced case law if you don't understand the fundamentals and this is the absolute heart and soul of everything search and seizure this case comes up when we talk about consent to search it comes up when we talk about major decisions that we just saw in more advanced areas like carpenter and digital data and tracking.
So when I do a class, it's not your typical like, hey, I'm an attorney and look at all this case law.
Instead, I approach my class with police officers with the idea that it's 2026 at the time of this video and things have significantly changed from when I was a prosecutor doing the legal update and that was the only training that you got over a two year period when it came to the law.
If you want to be a police officer today in this environment, It's not an option.
In order to do that, you have to look at the law like an attorney looks at it and understand it at a deeper level.
And to understand the why, you have to understand the rules and the foundation behind it because this case came out in 1967, yet its implications are still felt today.
If you haven't seen it yet, I recently did this video on Chattery, a big decision out of the United States Supreme Court in which they discussed reasonable expectation or privacy involving your location data in a geofence warrant, but the implications are far-reaching.
But in order for chat read to really make sense, Again, you gotta know the foundation, you gotta know CATS.
Today, I'm gonna be breaking down what I often tell my students in class this is the most important case you got to know because we can't go and talk about advanced case law if you don't understand the fundamentals and this is the absolute heart and soul of everything search and seizure this case comes up when we talk about consent to search it comes up when we talk about major decisions that we just saw in more advanced areas like carpenter and digital data and tracking.
So when I do a class, it's not your typical like, hey, I'm an attorney and look at all this case law.
Instead, I approach my class with police officers with the idea that it's 2026 at the time of this video and things have significantly changed from when I was a prosecutor doing the legal update and that was the only training that you got over a two year period when it came to the law.
If you want to be a police officer today in this environment, It's not an option.
In order to do that, you have to look at the law like an attorney looks at it and understand it at a deeper level.
And to understand the why, you have to understand the rules and the foundation behind it because this case came out in 1967, yet its implications are still felt today.
If you haven't seen it yet, I recently did this video on Chattery, a big decision out of the United States Supreme Court in which they discussed reasonable expectation or privacy involving your location data in a geofence warrant, but the implications are far-reaching.
But in order for chat read to really make sense, Again, you gotta know the foundation, you gotta know CATS.
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