03/02/2020 Bartnicki v. Vopper, 532 US 514 - Supreme Court 2001 - Google Scholar "In a democratic society privacy of communication is essential if citizens are to think and act creatively and constructively. Fear or suspicion that one's speech is being monitored by a stranger, even without the reality of such activity, can have a seriously inhibiting effect upon the willingness to voice critical and constructive ideas." President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society 202 (1967). To effectuate these important privacy and speech interests, Congress and the vast majority of States have proscribed the intentional interception and knowing disclosure of the contents of electronic communications.[2] See, e. g., 18 U. S. C. § 2511(1)(c) (placing restrictions upon "any person who . . . intentionally discloses, or endeavors to disclose, to any 544 other person the contents of any wire, oral, or electronic communication, *544 knowing or having reason to know that the information was obtained through the interception of a wire, oral, or electronic communication"). The Court correctly observes that these are "contentneutral law[s] of general applicability" which serve recognized interests of the "highest order": "the interest in individual privacy and . . . in fostering private speech." Ante, at 526, 518. It nonetheless subjects these laws to the strict scrutiny normally reserved for governmental attempts to censor different viewpoints or ideas. See ante, at 532 (holding that petitioners have not established the requisite "`need. . . of the highest order' ") (quoting Smith v. Daily Mail Publishing Co., 443 U. S. 97, 103 (1979)). There is scant support, either in precedent or in reason, for the Court's tacit application of strict scrutiny. A content-neutral regulation will be sustained if "`it furthers an important or substantial governmental interest; if the governmental interest is unrelated to the suppression of free expression; and if the incidental restriction on alleged First Amendment freedoms is no greater than is essential to the furtherance of that interest.' " Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC, 512 U. S. 622, 662 (1994) (quoting United States v. O'Brien, 391 U. S. 367, 377 (1968)). Here, Congress and the Pennsylvania Legislature have acted "`without reference to the content of the regulated speech.' " Renton v. Playtime Theatres, Inc., 475 U. S. 41, 48 (1986). There is no intimation that these laws seek "to suppress unpopular ideas or information or manipulate the public debate" or that they "distinguish favored speech from disfavored speech on the basis of the ideas or views expressed." Turner Broadcasting, supra, at 641, 643. The anti disclosure provision is based solely upon the manner in which the conversation was 545 acquired, not the subject matter of the conversation or the viewpoints of the speakers. The same *545 information, if obtained lawfully, could be published with impunity. Cf. Seattle Times Co. v. Rhinehart, 467 U. S. 20, 34 (1984) (upholding under intermediate scrutiny a protective order on information acquired during discovery in part because "the party may disseminate the identical information . . . as long as the information is gained through means independent of the court's processes"). As the concerns motivating strict scrutiny are absent, these contentneutral restrictions upon speech need pass only intermediate scrutiny. The Court's attempt to avoid these precedents by reliance upon the Daily Mail string of newspaper cases is unpersuasive. In these cases, we held that statutes prohibiting the media from publishing certain truthful information— the name of a rape victim, Florida Star v. B. J. F., 491 U. S. 524 (1989); Cox Broadcasting Corp. v. Cohn, 420 U. S. 469 (1975), the confidential proceedings before a state judicial review commission, Landmark Communications, Inc. v. Virginia, 435 U. S. 829 (1978), and the name of a juvenile defendant, Daily Mail, supra; Oklahoma Publishing Co. v. District Court, Oklahoma Cty., 430 U. S. 308 (1977) (per curiam) — violated the First Amendment. In so doing, we stated that "if a newspaper lawfully obtains truthful information about a matter of public significance then state officials may not constitutionally punish publication of the information, absent a need to further a state interest of the highest order." Daily Mail, supra, at 103. Neither this Daily Mail principle nor any other aspect of these cases, however, justifies the Court's imposition of strict scrutiny here. Each of the laws at issue in the Daily Mail cases regulated the content or subject matter of speech. This fact alone was enough to trigger strict scrutiny, see United States v. Playboy Entertainment Group, Inc., 529 U. S. 803, 813 (2000) ("[A] content-based speech restriction . . . can stand only if it satisfies strict scrutiny"), and suffices to distinguish these anti 546 disclosure provisions. But, as our synthesis of these *546 cases in Florida Star made clear, three other unique factors also informed the scope of the Daily Mail principle. First, the information published by the newspapers had been lawfully obtained from the government itself.[3] "Where information is entrusted to the government, a less drastic means than punishing truthful publication almost always exists for guarding against the dissemination of private facts." Florida Star, supra, at 534. See, e. g., Landmark Communications, supra, at 841, and n. 12 (noting that the State could have taken steps to protect the confidentiality of its proceedings, such as holding in contempt commission members who breached their duty of confidentiality). Indeed, https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?q=bartnicki&hl=en&as_sdt=2006&case=2171346211086974391&scilh=0 9/15