03/02/2020 Bartnicki v. Vopper, 532 US 514 - Supreme Court 2001 - Google Scholar the State's ability to control the information undermined the claim that the restriction was necessary, for "[b]y placing the information in the public domain on official court records, the State must be presumed to have concluded that the public interest was thereby being served." Cox Broadcasting, supra, at 495. This factor has no relevance in the present cases, where we deal with private conversations that have been intentionally kept out of the public domain. Second, the information in each case was already "publicly available," and punishing further dissemination would not have advanced the purported government interests of confidentiality. Florida Star, supra, at 535. Such is not the case here. These statutes only prohibit "disclos[ure]," 18 U. S. C. § 2511(1)(c); 18 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 5703(2) (2000), and one cannot "disclose" what is already in the public domain. See Black's Law Dictionary 477 (7th ed. 1999) (defining "disclosure" as "[t]he act or process of making known something that was previously unknown; a revelation of facts"); 547 *547 S. Rep. No. 1097, at 93 ("The disclosure of the contents of an intercepted communication that had already become `public information' or `common knowledge' would not be prohibited"). These laws thus do not fall under the axiom that "the interests in privacy fade when the information involved already appears on the public record." Cox Broadcasting, supra, at 494-495. Third, these cases were concerned with "the `timidity and self-censorship' which may result from allowing the media to be punished for publishing certain truthful information." Florida Star, 491 U. S., at 535. But fear of "timidity and selfcensorship" is a basis for upholding, not striking down, these anti disclosure provisions: They allow private conversations to transpire without inhibition. And unlike the statute at issue in Florida Star, which had no scienter requirement, see id., at 539, these statutes only address those who knowingly disclose an illegally intercepted conversation.[4] They do not impose a duty to inquire into the source of the information and one could negligently disclose the contents of an illegally intercepted communication without liability. In sum, it is obvious that the Daily Mail cases upon which the Court relies do not address the question presented here. Our decisions themselves made this clear: "The Daily Mail principle does not settle the issue whether, in cases where information has been acquired unlawfully by a newspaper or by a source, government may ever punish not only the 548 unlawful acquisition, but the ensuing publication as well." Florida Star, supra, at 535, n. 8; see also Daily Mail, 443 U. S., at 105 ("Our holding in this case is narrow. There is no issue before us of unlawful press [conduct]"); Landmark *548 Communications, 435 U. S., at 837 ("We are not here concerned with the possible applicability of the statute to one who secures the information by illegal means and thereafter divulges it").[5] Undaunted, the Court places an inordinate amount of weight upon the fact that the receipt of an illegally intercepted communication has not been criminalized. See ante, at 528-532. But this hardly renders those who knowingly receive and disclose such communications "law-abiding," ante, at 529, and it certainly does not bring them under the Daily Mail principle. The transmission of the intercepted communication from the eavesdropper to the third party is itself illegal; and where, as here, the third party then knowingly discloses that communication, another illegal act has been committed. The third party in this situation cannot be likened to the reporters in the Daily Mail cases, who lawfully obtained their information through consensual interviews or public documents. These laws are content neutral; they only regulate information that was illegally obtained; they do not restrict republication of what is already in the public domain; they impose no special burdens upon the media; they have a scienter requirement to provide fair warning; and they promote the privacy and free speech of those using cellular telephones. It is hard to imagine a more narrowly tailored prohibition of the disclosure of illegally intercepted communications, and it distorts our precedents to review these statutes under the often fatal standard of strict scrutiny. 549 These laws therefore should be upheld if they further a substantial *549 governmental interest unrelated to the suppression of free speech, and they do. Congress and the overwhelming majority of States reasonably have concluded that sanctioning the knowing disclosure of illegally intercepted communications will deter the initial interception itself, a crime which is extremely difficult to detect. It is estimated that over 20 million scanners capable of intercepting cellular transmissions currently are in operation, see Thompson, Cell Phone Snooping: Why Electronic Eavesdropping Goes Unpunished, 35 Am. Crim. L. Rev. 137, 149 (1997), notwithstanding the fact that Congress prohibited the marketing of such devices eight years ago, see 47 U. S. C. § 302a(d).[6] As Congress recognized, "[a]ll too often the invasion of privacy itself will go unknown. Only by striking at all aspects of the problem can privacy be adequately protected." S. Rep. No. 1097, at 69. See also Hearings on H. R. 3378 before the Subcommittee on Courts, Civil Liberties, and the Administration of Justice of the House Committee on the Judiciary, 99th Cong., 1st Sess. and 2d Sess., 290 (1986) ("Congress should be under no illusion . . . that the Department [of Justice], because of the difficulty of such investigations, would be able to bring a substantial number of successful prosecutions"). https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?q=bartnicki&hl=en&as_sdt=2006&case=2171346211086974391&scilh=0 10/15