Let us assume that the Court, faced with the case of the Net-wide search, recognized that the old standard had provided protections for important interests, including the individual need for a zone of autonomy and the collective need for a potential for disobedience, that were not incorporated into the present test. [FN148] While one possibility would be a return to the pre- Katz, *1119 bright-line standard, such an approach would generate many more problems than it would solve. The Warren Court abandoned the bright-line approach in the face of the growing complexity of modern life, and that approach would be still less workable today.

In my view, the appropriate solution would be to retain the balancing approach and modify the test to include these interests. Once included in the test, these factors would create a presumption against the Net-wide search that could only be overcome by a strong showing that the digital contraband in question represented an immediate danger to life and limb. Justice Jackson once wrote, "if we are to make judicial exceptions to the Fourth Amendment. .. it seems to me they should depend somewhat on the gravity of the offense." [FN149] Although the Court has never incorporated Justice Jackson's position into the definition of probable cause as such, the Court has appropriately achieved the same result by including the weight of the government's needs as a factor in determining the level of individualized suspicion required for a given search.

As a consequence, while the Fourth Amendment ought to prevent routine uses of the Net-wide search for nonviolent criminals such as software pirates or possessors of child pornography, it would not have prevented a Net-wide search on the day the Unabomber delivered his manifesto to the New York Times and the Washington Post. [FN150] On the extraordinary occasion when a search might yield reliable evidence tying its possessor directly to violent crime, the interests protected by the Fourth Amendment clearly yield. Not only is there a negligible social interest in reevaluating the value of violent disobedience, but even the threat to one's autonomy is less serious in the case of physical violence to others. Such crimes are comparatively rare, and we need have little fear that the majority will suddenly criminalize something previously personal. Although the use of the Net-wide search for violent crime restricts the area of the individual's autonomy slightly, a firm limitation to immediate threats of violence would present little threat of future government expansion.

The prospect of a Net-wide search in cyberspace presents us with a vision of a search that might cheaply, easily, and effectively scan through areas as sensitive and central to our personal security as our diaries, our checkbooks, *1120 our calendars, and our correspondence. The prospect of such a surgical search [FN151] thus requires us to ask, in essence, whether there is not a limit to even the legitimate power that might be exercised by the state, and if so, what the contours of that limit might look like. In this respect, it is important to remember that while "[t]he touchstone of [the Court's] analysis under the Fourth Amendment is always. .. reasonableness," [FN152] the Founders' ultimate desire was not that the government be reasonable but rather that the people be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects.

The vision implicit in the Fourth Amendment reaches beyond the dictates of simply seeking more efficient enforcement techniques. The Court once noted that neither the Fourth nor the Fifth Amendment is "an adjunct to the ascertainment of truth.. .. [Rather, those privileges] stand[ ] as a protection of quite different constitutional values -- values reflecting the concern of our society for the right of each individual to be left alone." [FN153] The values of one's home and office as a psychological refuge and as a source of power independent of the government represent a pair of interests protected by the property-model of the Fourth Amendment. The continuing importance of these interests suggests that there is indeed an outer bound beyond which a constitutional government cannot reasonably expand, and that as a consequence the list of factors to be balanced is seriously incomplete. Until now, these omissions have been largely obscured by other, serendipitous limitations on governmental conduct, but as technology makes possible more economical and more targeted searches, the Court will need to expand its current test if the balancing approach is to continue to serve the fundamental purposes of the Fourth Amendment.