"In their defence, government lawyers argued they were not looking inside the house but had picked up the heat waves that were coming out of it. Also, they were standing at a distance and not intruding into the owner's personal space, they said. "
Seems to be lost on them that it's the worst sort of intrusion possible when the intruders don't let you know you're being intruded upon.
Article's below.
Joanna S
===== In today's Sydney Morning Herald http://www.smh.com.au/news/0106/13/world/world9.html
Reprinted from the Los Angeles Times
Thermal snooping by police ruled out of line
The Supreme Court, in a case pitting 18th-century constitutional privacy protection against the intrusive power of modern technology, has ruled police may not use heat detectors and other high-tech devices to look inside a home. In a surprisingly strong defence of the right to privacy, the court threw out drug evidence against an Oregon man who was growing marijuana plants in his house and ruled that narcotics agents violated his rights by using a thermal imager on a public street to spot his hothouse. Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative who usually supports the government in the war on drugs, said that spying inside a home was a different matter. He spoke for the 5-4 majority in Monday's ruling. "The Fourth Amendment draws a firm line at the entrance to the house," he said. "That line, we think, must be not only firm but also bright ... Where, as here, the government uses a device that is not in general public use, to explore details of the home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion, the surveillance is a 'search' and is presumptively unreasonable without a warrant." The ruling appears to put a significant limit on the government's use of new technologies that can pick up sounds or images inside a home. "This is an important victory for the Fourth Amendment because it says again the home is a protected area," said James Tomkovicz, a professor of law at Iowa University, who filed a friend-of-the-court brief for the American Civil Liberties Union. "I think [the justices] were worried about what comes next, the technology that would allow the government to stay out but detect what is going on inside the home." The justices have struggled over the years to decide what constitutes a search. They have upheld the use of drug-sniffing dogs as well as officers using binoculars to look inside a yard. In such instances, they have said officers on a public street are free to use their senses, including their eyes, to peer into a private area. In a more controversial decision, the justices upheld the use of low-flying aircraft and helicopters that spotted marijuana growing in homes and yards. Again, the court reasoned that officers were just using their sight. But Justice Scalia said there was nothing natural or obvious about using a thermal imager to detect heat from a home. In their defence, government lawyers argued they were not looking inside the house but had picked up the heat waves that were coming out of it. Also, they were standing at a distance and not intruding into the owner's personal space, they said. The court's majority refused to accept those distinctions. Allowing sophisticated searching devices that were kept distant from the home "would leave the home owner at the mercy of advancing technology - including imaging technology that could discern all human activity in the home", Justice Scalia said. The ruling is narrowed by its application only to an initial search for evidence. If police already have clear evidence of a crime inside a home, such as testimony that a home owner is growing marijuana, officers can obtain a search warrant to enter the house. In this case, by contrast, agents used the thermal images to convince a magistrate that the home owner, Mr Danny Kyllo, was growing marijuana.
----- my site www.overlookhouse.com news from down under www.smh.com.au