Federal Judge Approves Warrantless, Covert Video Surveillance 420
Penurious Penguin writes "Your curtilage may be your castle, but 'open fields' are open game for law-enforcement and surveillance technology. Whether 'No Trespassing' signs are present or not, your private property is public for the law, with or without a warrant. What the police cannot do, their cameras can — without warrant or court oversight. An article at CNET recounts a case involving the DEA, a federal judge, and two defendants (since charged) who were subjected to video surveillance on private property without a warrant. Presumably, the 4th Amendment suffers an obscure form of agoraphobia further elucidated in the article."
TFS is lacking (Score:4, Informative)
"Callahan based his reasoning on a 1984 Supreme Court case called Oliver v. United States, in which a majority of the justices said that "open fields" could be searched without warrants because they're not covered by the Fourth Amendment. What lawyers call "curtilage," on the other hand, meaning the land immediately surrounding a residence, still has greater privacy protections."
Of course, that's -not- what the article says (Score:5, Informative)
As the article explains: open fields, even when attached to homes, aren't normally covered by the 4th Amendment, because they're not in the plain-terms of the language. The 4th Amendment doesn't protect all property, but rather just the enumerated properties and spaces. Curtilage - the land immediately attached to a home - is sometimes covered, but separate fields such as these aren't.
Re:So tell me, Obama fans... (Score:2, Informative)
Go visit your local high school and sit in on a civics class. The head of the executive branch has nothing to do with the decision of someone in the judicial branch. Obama didn't make a cameo appearance in the courtroom. Aside from a judge appointed by the president, you'd have to be a complete idiot to blame the executive office for something a judge decided to do in his own courtroom.
Re:wait (Score:5, Informative)
This judge was appointed by Bush, but sure, whatever you say.
Re:So tell me, Obama fans... (Score:2, Informative)
Does this square with your expectations?
About what I'd expect, considering he was appointed by Bush. According to Wikipedia:
Griesbach was nominated by President George W. Bush
Unadulterated BULLSHIT (Score:5, Informative)
Anyone care to explain where, precisely, the above amendment specifies that it only applies to indoor, private property?
Now that the SCOTUS has decided your property is now public and thus available to police scrutiny without warrant, is there still anyone stupid enough to think this won't eventually creep past the threshold and into your home?
Seriously WTF!!!! (Score:5, Informative)
"Two defendants in the case, Manuel Mendoza and Marco Magana of Green Bay, Wis., have been charged with federal drug crimes after DEA agent Steven Curran claimed to have discovered more than 1,000 marijuana plants grown on the property, and face possible life imprisonment and fines of up to $10 million."
Life in prison for growing plants, fuck our legal system.
Re:wait (Score:5, Informative)
The difference is with Obama it's the government/public agencies doing this, while under Romney it'll be private sector doing it and billing anyone who wants to know what they saw.
Well, there goes that "difference". You apparently haven't seen Obama's latest Executive Order [whitehouse.gov].
Remember, folks, it's a "public-private partnership"; we don't call it fascism anymore!
Precedent (Score:5, Informative)
Re:So tell me, Obama fans... (Score:5, Informative)
False equivalency. The Obama / Holder justice department has cracked down on pot 4 times as hard [rollingstone.com] as Bush ever did, even conducting twice as many raids on medical marijuana facilities in 4 years than Bush did in 8. And this from the President that promised (as a candidate) to leave them alone.
Re:Also Unclear Where the Cameras Were Installed (Score:4, Informative)
But if you live on a 1000-acre farm, very likely the "protected curtilage" would be only a small area around the actual house. You can help define this "protected curtilage" area yoursef, by building a fence around the residential area you want protected. Maybe you wan the barn to be within the protected curtilage, for example. So you build a fence at an 80 yard radius around the house and the barn. Very likely, a court would rule that to be "curtilage". But the wheat fields or whatever? No.
Re:Unadulterated BULLSHIT (Score:5, Informative)
I don't really see any mention of land/fields in that description at all. What part of "persons, houses, papers and effects" leads you to think that it's talking about land?
Your suggestion that privately-owned land "is now public" is a bit ridiculous. This isn't about opening up your property to the public, it's about protecting open fields from searches without a warrant. You still own the land and you can still prosecute people that trespass on it (qualified immunity notwithstanding).
Please keep in mind that this judge isn't the one ruling that fields are exempt from 4th Amendment protection. This was settled nearly a hundred years ago, but was the legal standard long before that:
HESTER v. U S, 265 U.S. 57 (1924) [findlaw.com]
The only shadow of a ground for bringing up the case is drawn from the hypothesis that the examination of the vessels took place upon Hester's father's land. As to that, it is enough to say that, apart from the justification, the special protection accorded by the Fourth Amendment to the people in their 'persons, houses, papers and effects,' is not extended to the open fields. The distinction between the latter and the house is as old as the common law. 4 Bl. Comm. 223, 225, 226.
The judge here is just applying that precedent to this case, and if you accept the precedent, it seems entirely appropriate and reasonable that it be applied this way here. If you don't like the outcome, don't piss on the judge for being reasonable. Talk to your legislature and get them to change the law.
Re:Also Unclear Where the Cameras Were Installed (Score:5, Informative)
To elaborate on the other posters, the term curtilage refers to a very small area around your house (like a typical suburban yard), and doesn't include other private property like farmland, etc. These people had a large wooded plot of land with a house on it. They had large fences and no trespassing signs all around the property. The police set up cameras on the private property, but away from the house.
Here is a better article [arstechnica.com] that also links to the full ruling, and has some very informative posts in the discussion.
Re:Unadulterated BULLSHIT (Score:5, Informative)
.
So the application of fencing around a yard turns it from an open field to a fenced enclosure, thus no longer an open field. A real lawyer would have to fight the issue for farm land. But if the field is unfenced, that's probably open field. Fenced and posted "no trespassing" fields, well, I don't think you can call those open fields anymore, even if they are not the "curtilage."
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Sometimes, when I see words that I do not know, like curtilage, I look them up. Sometimes, when I see a combination of words that seem to have an obvious meaning, like open field, I also look them up. Which is how I found the open field doctrine concept. Whew, I think I learned more than one thing today in each period, plus two more concepts just now. That might make it time for ice-cream to drop the bio-cpu brain-core temperature.
Re:Also Unclear Where the Cameras Were Installed (Score:2, Informative)
Again, none of the quotes say it was installed on curtilage!
Again, that's the point. The cameras were installed outside curtilage but still on the property. It's right there in the third quote, "...a location that allows law enforcement to record activities outside of a home and beyond protected curtilage..."
Dude you are on crack ... you would think they would say that it's on the property. What you quoted could be referring to ... wait for it ... public property off of your premises! From another article [arstechnica.com]:
Update: Our original story incorrectly suggested that Mendoza or Malaga owned the property in question. As the magistrate judge explained in a footnote: The government also briefly argues that there was no Fourth Amendment search because neither Mendoza nor Magana owned or leased the Property.