Can't Scan Without a Warrant
By Declan McCullagh (declan@wired.com)
2:00 a.m. June 12, 2001 PDT
WASHINGTON -- If the feds want to spy on your home using whizzy tech gadgets, they'd better get a warrant first, the Supreme Court said on Monday.
In an important 5-4 ruling that extends privacy's shield to radiation not visible to the human eye, the court said federal agents should have obtained a warrant before using an infrared imaging device to snoop on Danny Lee Kyllo, an Oregon man they later arrested for growing marijuana.
The decision, written by conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, said even though the law has long allowed police to peer at homes through their naked eyes, enhanced cameras and similar devices in law enforcement hands "would leave the homeowner at the mercy of advancing technology -- including imaging technology that could discern all human activity in the home."
This ruling seems likely to affect how federal and state police may use their rapidly-growing arsenal of advanced surveillance tools. In the Kyllo case, agents used an Agema 210 unit to detect unusual heat emissions from the halide lamps used to grow marijuana.
Since the Interior Department's unlawful surveillance of Kyllo in January 1992, infrared and other forms of electronic monitoring devices have become far more invasive, and the Justice Department has spent millions of dollars in research on X-ray devices that can see through even brick and concrete walls.
"Certainly optical performance has improved. And over the years thermal sensitivity has grown a lot greater," said Doug Little, spokesman for FLIR Systems of Portland, Oregon, which bought Agema in 1998. "Cameras are a lot more accurate now."
[...]
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