Pubdate: Sun, 17 Jun 2001
Source: Oakland Tribune (CA)
Copyright: 2001 MediaNews Group, Inc. and ANG Newspapers
Contact:  http://www.mapinc.org/media/314
Website: http://www.oaklandtribune.com/
Note: This was originally published in the New York Times

PRIVACY PROTECTION

'THE Fourth Amendment draws a firm line at the entrance to the house."
So declared the Supreme Court last week in an important 5-4 ruling. The
ruling reaffirmed the basic right of privacy that Americans are
constitutionally entitled to enjoy in their own homes in an era when
high-tech devices make it possible for police to snoop from outside. 

The case concerns the use of a thermal imaging device by federal
officers in Oregon who suspected that marijuana was being cultivated in
a private home, using special, intense lighting. The government argued,
and four dissenting justices agreed, that no warrant was needed because
the infrared scan merely measured "waste heat" emitted from the exterior
of the home, and that the images obtained were too murky to reveal
"intimate" private information. 

But Justice Antonin Scalia had no trouble rejecting such flimsy excuses
for evading the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement. 

The decision serves notice that police need to obtain a warrant before
using any device not in general public use to gain details about a
person's private home that could not otherwise be discovered without
physical intrusion -- a legal approach that might be read to bar
warrantless use of the Internet wire technology known as Carnivore, as
Rep. Dick Armey noted. 

In setting a sound legal standard, Scalia and his colleagues have given
basic privacy rights important protections against the misuse of high
technology.
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MAP posted-by: Doc-Hawk