Hello dear listeners it's Manouch. One was the last time you were in a phone booth. The

phone booth is actually an important part of American history that you could go into this little box and close the folding door behind you and be alone is at the crux of a pivotal Supreme Court case about the very nature of privacy in the modern world.

It's note to self the tech show about being human I'm a new summer Odie.

The way it worked was that there was approximately five inches operating on the team Mr. Capi.

This week not just one but the two court cases which set the stage for the looming fight over what rights we have to keep our digital stuff private.

It was stated that one more reaching means of invading privacy have become available to the government.

Both cases put the telephone at the center of what we consider a reasonable expectation of privacy.

The sounds would be reflected into the microphone and then ultimately to a tape recorder which recorded the conversation.

But as the world moved from landlines to smartphones where and when we can be private is up for grabs and it matters a lot.

The bill of rights it puts limits on the US government's power and the fourth amendment specifically is about protecting our privacy.

Even though the word doesn't even appear in that one flowery on a sentence.

So the fourth amendment says the right of the people to be secure in their persons houses papers and effects against unreasonable search and seizure shall not be violated nor shall a warrant issue but based upon probable cause.

This is Laura Donahue, professor of law of Georgetown law.

Laura is also director of Georgetown Center on privacy and technology and she's an expert on the fourth amendment.

And according to Laura we have to go back to Old England to understand where these words in the fourth amendment come from and why our founding fathers insisted on using them.

They were Englishmen first and foremost the founding generation and they expected that their rights as Englishmen would traverse the Atlantic.

Rights for English men. Yeah, nobody else.

Among the rights they expected to bring with them was basically that law enforcement couldn't just bust into your house whenever it wanted to.

The idea in English history was that the crown could not violate the sanctity of the home to target individuals who might see the world differently than they did who might have a different political view.

Those rights dated back to England and a ruling in 1603 that said every man's house is his castle.

You've probably heard that phrase. But over in the new world it was a different ballgame. The king started issuing warrants called Ritz of Assistance.

Literally pieces of paper that gave customs officials written permission to search all the buildings in Boston Harbor as they looked for smuggled goods.

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