cannabisnews.com: Justices Hear Case On High -Tech Surveillance





Justices Hear Case On High -Tech Surveillance
Posted by FoM on February 20, 2001 at 21:24:03 PT
By Charles Lane, Washington Post Staff Writer
Source: Washington Post
Among the many new tools modern technology has put at the disposal of law enforcement is the Agema 210 thermal imager, a device officers can point at a house to measure heat emanating from inside. Police use them because sometimes a suspicious heat flow can be evidence of criminal conduct.That was the situation on a winter evening in Oregon in 1992, when federal officers used an Agema 210 to help them determine that the unusual heat pattern coming from Danny Kyllo's house was produced by high-intensity lamps that Kyllo was using to illuminate an illegal indoor marijuana nursery.
Indicted for manufacturing marijuana, Kyllo went to court, challenging the evidence produced by the thermal imaging device. He asserted that the officers were required by the Constitution to get a search warrant before they aimed it at his house.Lower courts agreed with law enforcement officials that the use of the thermal imager did not require a warrant, but the Supreme Court decided to hear Kyllo's appeal, apparently to take its own look at the question of how much privacy citizens have a right to expect at home in an era when technology can virtually peer through walls.The court's precedents connect the warrant requirement to the degree of privacy a reasonable person would expect in a given situation.The rule was established in a 1967 case in which the court held that police needed a warrant to place an electronic eavesdropping device on the outside of a public telephone booth.During oral arguments on the case yesterday, Kyllo's attorney, Kenneth Lerner, attempted to persuade the justices that, if anything, the expectation of privacy was even greater in one's home, and that the thermal imaging device, though it does not produce an X-ray-like photograph of what is going on inside, gives the government so much private information that its use amounts to "spying."In generally skeptical questioning from the bench, several of the justices wondered how different the potential invasion of privacy created by heat imaging technology might be from the intrusion created by more familiar devices such as binoculars or night-vision goggles.Justice John Paul Stevens asked Lerner if the police would need a warrant before dangling a thermometer from a long pole to measure the temperature of a rooftop."Obviously I don't think that we would prohibit things like thermometers or watches or things that we typically use in our daily lives," Lerner conceded.Arguing for the United States, Assistant Solicitor General Michael R. Dreeben noted that the thermal imager "does not penetrate the walls of the house, it does not reveal particular objects in the house," but rather creates a rough picture of "heat gradients" that have already radiated outside the house. Citizens may not reasonably expect that the heat "on the exterior surface of their walls" should be kept private, Dreeben said."I think there is a reasonable expectation of privacy that what you're doing in your bathroom is not going to be picked up when you take a bath by somebody with one of these [thermal imaging devices]," Justice David H. Souter countered.Dreeben responded by noting that the images produced by an Agema 210 are too vague to create such a risk: "What you're doing in your bathroom is not picked up by the thermal imager," he responded.Lerner, however, seemed to score a point when he suggested that the justices should keep the inevitable progress of technology in mind when they rule on a case involving the relatively murky images generated by current devices."The government's test is really going to lead down a difficult road for this court," he said. "When will information become . . . specific enough that it should be protected?"Complete Title: Justices Hear Oregon Case On High-Tech Surveillance Source: Washington Post (DC) Author: Charles Lane, Washington Post Staff WriterPublished: Wednesday, February 21, 2001Address: 1150 15th Street Northwest, Washington, DC 20071Copyright: 2001 The Washington Post Company Contact: letterstoed washpost.comWebsite: http://www.washingtonpost.com/Feedback: http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/edit/letters/letterform.htm Related Articles:Supreme Court Hears Arguments on Marijuana Casehttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread8733.shtmlHigh-Tech Police: Big Brother with a Badge? http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread8732.shtmlEven Walls Won't Protect Your Privacy Now http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread8731.shtml 
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