Generally, a person has no reasonable expectation of privacy for property and personal effects they hold open to the public. The Fourth Amendment does not protect things that are visible or in "plain view" for a person of ordinary and unenhanced vision.
Because electronic surveillance is a search under the Fourth Amendment, it is subject to the same warrant requirements as other searches.
As the Supreme Court made clear in Riley v. California, the Fourth Amendment provides individuals a heightened expectation of privacy in cell phones, which “differ in both a quantitative and a qualitative sense” from other items due to the immense amount of personal data they contain.
The Constitution, through the Fourth Amendment, protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government. The Fourth Amendment, however, is not a guarantee against all searches and seizures, but only those that are deemed unreasonable under the law.
The Fourth Amendment is very brief. Despite its importance, it's only one sentence long. It has two clauses: the "unreasonable search and seizure" clause and the "warrants" clause.
Writing for the majority, Justice Potter Stewart wrote that the Fourth Amendment "protects people, not places." Therefore, whatever a person "knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection." Justice Stewart continued by writing that "what he seeks to ...
Riley made clear that cell phones, or what the Court called “minicomputers,” are sui generis for Fourth Amendment purposes.
Recent Supreme Court precedent, however, makes it clear that the Fourth Amendment fully protects text messaging—which has become one of the predominant forms of communication in our society and often contains a person's most private correspondence with friends, family, and co-workers.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things ...
The Constitution provides that an amendment may be proposed either by the Congress with a two-thirds majority vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate or by a constitutional convention called for by two-thirds of the State legislatures.