Cornell University in Ithaca currently has an exhibit – “Fashioning Justice: Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’54 and the Power of Presence” – which celebrates fashion trends and legal decisions influenced by the former Supreme Court Justice (aka RBG). What links fashion to the rule of law? For this display, handbags.

In the past, women used tie-on pockets under their skirts to carry personal effects. The introduction of handbags raised questions about “warrantless searches,” and Justice Ginsburg, who used handbags herself (each containing a pocket-sized copy of the U.S. Constitution), wrote about Fourth Amendment protections that safeguard the privacy of personal possessions we carry off our body and beyond our homes. In the absence of a warrant or lawful arrest, handbags and wallets are protected. Whew!

Nowadays, iPhones (with a fancy case) can also serve as a fashion accessory and as part of your personal management and communications “infrastructure.” For a monthly fee, iPhones wire us into the Matrix beyond what landlines or pocket watches or At-a-Glance Day Timers ever could. This concentration of our personal and private lives in black-box devices also raises questions of privacy.

Fortunately, the contents of mobile phones also have meaningful constitutional protections. As with handbags, the Supreme Court ruled that cell phones are “effects” protected by the Fourth Amendment, generally requiring a warrant for law enforcement to search them.

So, what happens when elected and appointed government representatives no longer respect those protections? What have other public servants done in the past?

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Robert Mueller, who died this month, fought to protect privacy rights and the United States. A former Marine officer and graduate of the U.S. Army’s Ranger School, Mueller earned a Bronze Star for valor and Purple Heart in Vietnam, where he led platoons in battle and to rescue American soldiers under attack. Later, as an Assistant Attorney General, Mueller oversaw the prosecutions of Panamanian strongman (and cocaine “kingpin”) Manuel Noriega and Gambino crime family boss John Gotti.

(Imagine holding Mueller’s resume and interviewing him to manage your flower shop. “Well, Bob, I see you have leadership and management experience, which is great and, uh, thank you for your service, but we’re not really looking for that kind of badass, know what I mean? We make boutonnieres.”)

In March 2004, Mueller, then with the F.B.I. and resignation letter in hand, met with President Bush about the N.S.A.’s “Stellar Wind” program, which gathered information – emails and other electronic records – and eavesdropped on U.S. citizens without a warrant. Mueller understood it to violate U.S. protections on illegal searches and seizures, yet President Bush had unilaterally reauthorized the program.

In his memoir, Decision Points, President Bush recalled that he “had to make a big decision, and fast. I thought about the Saturday Night Massacre” when President Nixon, as part of the 1973 Watergate fiasco, forced the attorney general and his deputy to resign. Instead of repeating history by accepting Mueller’s resignation, President Bush decided to support scaling back the N.S.A. program.

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A personal phone both carries private information and links to the internet and devices that track our movements, searches, account balances, and medical records. Private companies collect this data, repackage it, and sell it. Who would buy it? Advertisers. Bounty hunters. Political campaigns. Criminal syndicates. And the U.S. government buys this data in bulk, without warrants, and can use it to reveal details about U.S. citizens.

DOGE and other U.S. government agencies have illegally hoovered up our private data. The Department of Justice confirmed that DOGE employees had inappropriate access to personal data, that DOGE violated legal restraining orders, and that DOGE had “uploaded sensitive Social Security data to a cloud server without adequate security controls.”

On April 20th, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act expires. This section bans federal agencies from collecting the type of data they are currently buying in bulk. Soon, Congress is expected to debate the reauthorization of FISA, including a change to close the “data broker loophole” which allows agencies to sidestep our Fourth Amendment protections. Please support this.

(The Brennan Center for Justice has an excellent 2026 Resource Page about FISA Section 702.)

The U.S. Constitution and founders of the United States understood our fallibilities. Great countries, teams, and businesses depend on leaders and public servants of character in word and action – such as George Washington and Harry Truman and RBG and Robert Mueller. We honor them by reading history, understanding both sides of important issues, and fighting for our own Constitutional rights.