> Department of the Interior used a thermal imaging device outside of Danny Lee Kyllo's home in Florence, Oregon. According to the District Court that presided over Kyllo's evidentiary hearing, the device could not "penetrate walls or windows to reveal conversations or human activities. The device recorded only heat being emitted from the home."
Hmmm, I wonder why the Department of the Interior is concerned with private residences in the first place? The reach of the War on Drugs is pretty incredible.
> The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the thermal imaging of Kyllo's home constituted a search. Since the police did not have a warrant when they used the device, which was not commonly available to the public, the search was presumptively unreasonable and therefore unconstitutional. The majority opinion argued that a person has an expected privacy in his or her home and therefore, the government cannot conduct unreasonable searches, even with technology that does not enter the home.
I just looked up the US Department of the Interior (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_the_Interior) and I'm confused about what they were doing - the war on drugs seems way outside their stated purposes. The article on the ruling doesn't seem to mention it though, would it have been fine if they'd had a warrant? I don't even see why they are able to get search warrants for a home from their stated purpose.
Interesting and recent precedent though. I wonder if it would hold for a normal camera if a drone flew past a house at human walking height and took pictures of what's inside. I'm guessing a police officer can act on seeing something in a house they're walking past, if that's the case then what if a drone took a picture and an officer later or immediately saw it?
That is very interesting. I was surprised at how easily the discussion was getting off-track at first (flashlight), but it does pick up in the end. It seems the judges try to distill the issue by a process of adversarial questioning and taking things to extremes.
Yes, they were rejected by the citizens of Seattle, which is why they gave them to the LAPD. Maybe they figured that the approval tide would be more easily begun in LA?
CCTV, as deployed today, really falls into to two categories. By far the largest of these is people who own or lease private property who are installing cameras on their own property. There are some "public private partnerships" where LEO is tapping into these feeds but, at least in the system I built, there is significant auditing involved. In order to catch "LOVEINT" style snooping. Typically though this footage goes completely unmonitored unless there is a incident though.
The second category is cameras that capture what would otherwise be "in public view." These are systems where the cameras are clearly visible and mounted close to the ground. In the context of the law having a live detective monitor a suspects house is pretty much the same as putting up a camera that would be functionally identical, which is pretty much the same as putting up a 1000 cameras and doing LPR on every car that passes by. If the feasibility of this kind of surveillance requires a change in the law is still an unresolved policy issue IMO.
With drones there are bigger issues. Because of elevation they are going to capture images of things that wouldn't be "in public view" and would therefore typically require a warrant. If these images were limited to the suspect there isn't an issue, but of course they aren't. The real kicker is going to be when someone figures out that they just need to add a $5K thermal sensor to the thing in order to net a couple incidental drug busts every time they need to track a suspect. At that point they will become profitable to operate, usage will increase, and one of the current bright-line tests for when you need a warrant will become significantly fuzzier.
Don't get me wrong. This type of technology is solving crimes that would otherwise be unsolved and helping people like Jianqing Klyzek protect themselves from police misconduct, but appropriate limits need to be put in place. The efficiency of subservience technology is only going to increase. We can't stop the world from innovating the only way to maintain a reasonable balance between privacy and safety is through policy and where to draw the line is definitely something that reasonable people can disagree on.
> We can't stop the world from innovating the only way to maintain a reasonable balance between privacy and safety is through policy and where to draw the line is definitely something that reasonable people can disagree on.
I agree.
Getting to the "in public view" point, private use of drones is becoming increasingly common too, and the law seems to be loath to prevent the police from legally doing something that J. Random Citizen could also do just as legally.
So to the extent that your random hobbyist could use drones we should expect that the police will not be far behind either, just as helicopters and planes are not forbidden to police use.