Pubdate: Tue, 07 Dec 2004
Source: Lindsay This Week (CN ON)
Copyright: 2004 Lindsay This Week
Contact:  http://www.lindsaythisweek.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2213
Author: Ian Johncox
Note: Ian Johncox is a lawyer with the Whitby firm Mason Bennett Johncox.

FLIR CAMERAS BACK ON AND LOOKING FOR GROW HOUSES

Legal Briefs

You may have followed the legal history of forward-looking infrared radar 
(FLIR).

FLIR cameras are used by police aircraft to help locate marijuana grow 
houses. They would use the FLIR as one ground for getting a warrant to 
search the house. The Ontario Court of Appeal had ruled that the police 
could not use FLIR without first getting a warrant on other grounds.

Canada is becoming a hot spot for marijuana growers. In the States, people 
go to jail for decades for that kind of thing. Here, the penalties are 
much, much more lenient. Even drug dealers can figure out that it is better 
to grow the maryjane here than in the States.

Growing pot in fields has its risks. Neighbours and police aircraft can 
spot the crops. Our growing season is hardly long. Poachers can cause a 
problem (there was a shooting as a result of a poaching attempt in Port 
Perry a few years ago.)

Some pot dealer had a great idea: buy houses in nice subdivisions and turn 
them into pot factories. They would bypass the hydro meters for most of 
their power, install lots of lights and crank out the pot.

The only ways of detecting these operations are: (1) alert neighbours; (2) 
luck (e.g. a fire caused by faulty wiring); or, (3) using FLIR technology 
to spot houses that have abnormally high levels of heat radiating from them.

The Ontario Court of Appeal decided it was an unreasonable invasion of our 
privacy to use FLIR. I'll give you one guess who was happy about that decision.

We then had a situation where the police had to rely on tips or luck to 
find these houses. These houses are fire traps, they steal power (that ends 
up costing all of us), the growers have guns to protect the crops and they 
are cranking out the pot by the truckload.

It was a pot grower's heaven.

Thankfully, the Supreme Court of Canada said that the Court of Appeal was 
wrong. People cannot expect to have an expectation of privacy of what is 
going on OUTSIDE their houses. Remember, even though FLIR sees what we 
cannot see with our naked eyes, it is only seeing the heat that is going 
through the roof. FLIR, at this stage of its development, cannot see what 
is going on inside a house. If, in the future, it becomes sufficiently 
advanced to do so, I'm sure that the use of the technology will be limited.

So, when you hear that police chopper hovering around your neighbourhood, 
be thankful. The police have the cameras on and are looking for the 
gun-toting drug dealers. If you are so inclined, you might check your local 
police service Web site for tips on how to spot a grow house. If you see a 
house that looks like a grow-op, you can then make the anonymous call to 
Crime Stoppers and the chopper will likely do a flyby to see if the heat 
signature is suspicious.
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