The Court likened such an indiscriminate grant of authority to search for any evidence of any crime to a general warrant, a tool used by British authorities in colonial America that the Fourth Amendment was enacted to outlaw. The Court held that conversations are protected by the Fourth Amendment, and that the use of electronic devices to capture conversations thus constituted a "search."
The Court compared such a broad grant of search authority to a general warrant, an instrument employed by British authorities in colonial America that the Fourth Amendment aimed to ban. The Court determined that conversations are safeguarded under the Fourth Amendment and using electronic devices to record these conversations constitutes a "search."