Doppler Radar Used By Police To Determine Home Occupancy 139
schwit1 sends an article by Orin Kerr about a court case where a judge has had to weigh Fourth Amendment protections against law enforcement's ability to use a Doppler radar device to tell whether people are present within a home. Kerr writes:
If the government has the burden of proving reasonable suspicion, should the court treat the absence of information in the record on this point as not changing its otherwise-reached view that there is reasonable suspicion (as it does), or should that be treated as a potentially serious deficiency in getting to reasonable suspicion that the government has to overcome?
I’m not sure of the answer. We don’t normally encounter this question because we normally understand the uses and limits of investigatory tools. If the officer looked through the window and didn’t see any other people, for example, we could intuitively factor that into the reasonable suspicion inquiry without having to think about burdens of proof. I’m less sure what we’re supposed to do when the government use a suspicion-testing technological device with unknown capabilities."
The judge in the court case wrote, "New technologies bring with them not only new opportunities for law enforcement to catch criminals but also new risks for abuse and new ways to invade constitutional rights (PDF). ... Unlawful searches can give rise not only to civil claims but may require the suppression of evidence in criminal proceedings. We have little doubt that the radar device deployed here will soon generate many questions for this court and others along both of these axes."
Forecast (Score:5, Funny)
Its mostly personal with a chance of privacy in my house.
You're going to have to vote correctly (Score:2)
If you're not Loyal to the Group of 17, and conforming to Correct Thought, then your disharmony will be modified with an eye toward perfecting it.
Re:Forecast (Score:4, Funny)
http://www.amazon.com/Stainless-Unpolished-Finish-backing_type-Thickness/dp/B00CNLZJPA/ [amazon.com]
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Re: Forecast (Score:1)
You are missing the point. If you are on the receiving end of microwaves that are intense enough to raise "vapors" from aluminum foil then the vapors are among the least of your concerns.
Aluminum foil is fine for this purpose, though I would probably prefer to just make a Faraday cage with grounded chicken wire.
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Its what? :P
Re: HARRRR!!! (Score:2)
You mean IR radiation? That stuff with even higher energy than radar?
That's an attack! (Score:2)
Radar is based on radiation. This, if there are people in the house, would give them cancer. Go back to infrared.
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Re:That's an attack! (Score:5, Interesting)
Radar is non ionizing. It could cook people, though, if it has enough power.
Actually, yes it can lead to cancer: http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-ce... [www.iarc.fr]
When you get your Armature radio license they hand you a sheet with warnings and exposure levels. Non-ionizing isn't nearly as bad as Ionizing radiation where even very low levels are dangerous. You need much higher energy levels of non-ionizing before it becomes dangerous. The 1 watt you find in most wifi devices is far far bellow what would be considered dangerous. I have a 70 watt 2 meter radio and even that's safe.
A wall penetrating Doppler radar device though? I would be concerned if that were pointed at me for anything more than a split second. It was deffinately not designed to be pointed at sleeping children. You'd really need to know exactly how it works though. The danger with non-ionizing radiation is not strait forward. It's not like you can just say "1hr of exposure to 1000watts is where it becomes dangerous!" It changes depending on the Frequency, duration, power and distance from the antenna. So it's really hard to say. I would think the FCC might be interested in talking to this police station.
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There has been one published paper showing a possible link between non-ionizing radiation and cancer. That doesn't mean there is a link.
Re:That's an attack! (Score:5, Insightful)
There has been one published paper showing a possible link between non-ionizing radiation and cancer. That doesn't mean there is a link.
No, get your facts strait. There has been 1 study that has shown that the relatively low levels of RF in a cellphones might be linked to cancer. Which is worth further study. But strong RF sources (i.e. far stronger than a Cellphone) are well known to be harmful to human health in many ways. Mainly they heat tissues in a very abnormal way that the human body is not able to cope with. Repetitive damage to cells is known to be carcinogenic. There's not been conclusive evidence that it's a direct carcinogen but there's plenty of anecdotal evidence. It's something that just hasn't been studied all that much because at the levels required to produce the effect the RF energy is already very dangerous and the FCC has strict limits on it anyway.
I remember the Mythbusters where they "Busted" the myth that you could cook a turkey in front of a radar dish. My father laughed his butt off at this. He was in the airforce in the 1970s as a radar tech and at one point was stationed in Alaska working on the BMEWS systems which had ranges in excess of 2000 miles. They put out Megawatts of power. One of the common problems he'd run into would be dead birds stuck in various parts of the radar dishes. They wouldn't just cook... they'd burst into flames.
Here's one of them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A... [wikipedia.org]
Go stand in front of that and tell me non-ionizing radiation in safe and doesn't cause cancer.
I've no idea what the police are using. I've no idea if it's safe... and neither do the police. Doplar radar has not been studied for safety when being pointed at a house, I can guarantee you that. They should not be doing this.
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Re:That's an attack! (Score:4, Insightful)
Right, that's true. At the time the radar guns were "Always on" you'd just point them at something and the display would display a number. When there were no cars the cops would lay them in their laps and not turn them off. Several developed tumors on their legs. Many of them sued but None of them won their cases (that I know of) due to lack of evidence. But since then they've changed radar speed detectors to only be on momentarily.
And this is the difficulty with this issue... The number of people with a need to be using strong RF sources on a daily basis are very few, and it's something that's hard to study. And the solution to avoiding exposure is very simple in most cases. In the case of the police, leaving the radar on was giving away their position to radar detectors... In the case of powerful radar, it's dangerous in its own right so they power it down before working on it. In the case of cellphones and other consumer devices, having high wattage transmitters creates all sorts of interference and band leakage problems so there are plenty of reasons to want to limit RF power that don't include cancer.
There are lots of reasons to limit RF power before you get to levels where you have to start worrying about cancer. Pointing Doppler radar at a residential house though? That's just stupid. That's not been proven safe, so we should assume that it's not.
Doppler radar HAS been studied for safety (Score:1)
I guess you really didn't read the OET Bulletin 65 you said you were handed as an Amateur Radio Licensee.
Doppler radar is continuous wave at low power (milliwatts), as is readily ascertained by looking it up, on Wikipedia, even. Or, by looking up the FCC registration. It's commonly used in those Part 15 automatic door opening thingies at 10 GHz (X-band) or 24 GHz (K-band); police speed radar uses the same bands; as do microwave/radar motion detectors for burglar alarms.
The safety of a CW signal is probably
Radar Cancer (Score:2)
Essentially, it's all about the power and proximity that determines the danger. First level of danger is being blinded or having your testicles ruined with non-ionizing radiation. Microwaves can blind you, so I assume radar can also since it's in some of the same RF bands. It's all about power and proximity, again.
The human eyeball has the right size and structure to
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This device will probably radiate slightly more than a wifi base station. Wall attenuation is only around 15dB at frequencies normally used for this type of application. The sensors exist off the shelf. They are used for example in burglary alarms and in homes for the elderly for fall detection.
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"Armature radio license"?
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I'm sure it's just a typo; don't get all wound up about it.
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I'm sure it's just a typo; don't get all wound up about it.
I don't know, it sure has sparked an interesting sidebar.
Re:That's an attack! (Score:4, Funny)
"Armature radio license"?
It allows you to use one of those wind-up radios that they make for camping and emergencies. I have a Level II Armature Radio License, which allows me to use the built-in flashlight in addition to the radio itself.
Re:That's an attack! (Score:5, Interesting)
As more topical to your post, would it also be affected by building materials? I don't know what power / frequency such radar would be running at, but YES I'm sure the FCC would. This is almost a guaranteed violation of whatever agreement his department has with the FCC to be able to use this...although the geek in me thinks it's a cool off-label usage like on Total Recall or Commando (Commando claimed to use X rays though lol) but 1) potentially dangerous 2) against an unconvicted civilian(s) 3) crossing the line of an expectation of privacy since we have little easy protection.
It's not something you can "opt out of". If you don't want to run the risk of having someone use your cell to spy on you, we can choose not to carry one with us. If we don't want people looking through the windows we can close the blinds. I suppose some type of Faraday cage or wall coverings would work, but that's just diving straight into paranoid conspiracy land. Trying to explain to any guests, family, etc why suddenly no EM signal works in your place is almost guaranteed to make everyone think you need some therapy LOL. In my ideal USA, even if this technique was 100% safe it should STILL be illegal.
For a legal precedence, this seems to line up with the police using thermal imaging (cancerous radiation too). How legal / common is it for LE to do night raids after thermaling a house to get the positions of targets? That stuff used to be "military grade" but with the massive federal "one cop, one tank" policy this should be filter out by now.
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When you get your Armature radio license
I failed the portion of AC current theory when I went for my motor radio license.
really gives new meaning to the ID string "this is whiskey alpha two, alpha bravo, mobile 6, over."
doppler radar is 1 milliwatt (Score:2, Informative)
Typical radiated power for through the wall radar is 10 milliwatts, and usually around 1 mW. That's apparently enough to penetrate 30 feet of concrete and rebar rubble
http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/09/26/nasas-new-heartbeat-sensor-could-save-lives/
A back of the envelope says you got more exposure from your WiFi when you entered your comment than you'd get from these things.
The operator of the radar will get a lot more cumulative exposure than the persons being watched, and I would imagine that the manufactur
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Right, because infrared isn't radiation...
In fact it's the same kind of radiation (electromagnetic / photonic), at even higher energies than microwave, which is itself even higher energy than radar.
Admittedly there are certain frequencies that cause extra problems, but for the most part the risk is the same: will you be cooked by the percentage of total power your body is absorbing by standing directly in front of the "spotlight".
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The whole cancer discussion aside, infrared sensors are passive.
Warm objects radiate infrared by themselves. You don't shower houses in infrared... that's the sun's job. And I doubt it would help you looking through walls much.
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So now they've opened the door to a new idea, reapplication of Geigers, here's the pitch, are you and your other crime bosses planning something huge and you're worried about leo's using Doppler to break up your plans, buy my LEO-way Geiger counters and know when law enforcement targets your group.
LOLwut. Geiger counters are for alpha, beta, or gamma ionizing radiation (they count how often stray ionizing particles hit the collector). You won't find any ionizing particles when radar-band transmission is used.
You probably meant to say "use an off the shelf car radar detector".
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Radiation doesn't mean bad, evil, or dangerous. Whether you like it or not, you and every other living thing in the entire universe exists in, and always has existed in a constant bath of radiation.
Now what is important is what type of radiation and how much. Now since they mention Radar specifically, we know it's some frequency of radio waves since Radar is an acronym of RAdio Detection And Ranging. I've also seen it l
Uh... what? (Score:5, Funny)
If the government has the burden of proving reasonable suspicion, should the court treat the absence of information in the record on this point as not changing its otherwise-reached view that there is reasonable suspicion (as it does), or should that be treated as a potentially serious deficiency in getting to reasonable suspicion that the government has to overcome? I’m not sure of the answer.
He's doing better than me then. I'm not sure of the question.
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That whole summary is a mess.
Police (Score:5, Funny)
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yeah, it's only really worth it f you can blind and deafen an infant.
Re:Police (Score:5, Informative)
Just need to know if that baby crib is occupied or not. No sense dropping a flashbang into an empty room.
Why bother? They got away with it, zero cost to them or their employer.
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Just need to know if that baby crib is occupied or not. No sense dropping a flashbang into an empty room.
God forbid they do their job the old-fashioned way by monitoring the residence for 24 - 48 hours prior to a raid.
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The old-fashioned way does not involve a raid, in fact. It's when you wait for the guy to go outside (say, to grab groceries) and arrest him on the street, where it's much easier and safer for all involved.
The reason why it's no longer preferred is because arresting the guy in his house is much better (= more profitable) from "equitable sharing" asset forfeiture perspective. You can do a search, and just summarily grab a lot of stuff right there and then, and keep a huge chunk of it.
Hence, raids.
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How about they reserve that kind of bullshit for the really dangerous criminals and use the savings to fund doing it right.
Of course, a lot of it isn't a matter of funding, it's a matter of being conscientious and not creating situations where things tend to go dreadfully wrong. There is no excuse for shooting a 7 year old at the wrong address during a raid when they honestly could have just knocked on the door to deliver the warrant like they used to.
Interestingly, doing it right could easily also be cheap
Interesting (Score:5, Informative)
This technology is here now and is similar to the earlier use of thermal imaging cameras, except it works better. If radars can detect breathing of people trapped in rubble, then they can certainly detect breathing of someone on the other side of a door, or in a house across the street.
I think what the judge is getting at here is whether that is a "search" in the 4th amendment sense. Is the probable cause standard for "a specific person" or "anyone". In the cited case, they were looking for a fugitive, in a house associated with the fugitive (e.g. the bad guy had paid for electrical service) at a time when the guy was expected to be there. That stuff alone is enough to provide probable cause.
But they also used the radar from outside. And that's what the judge wasn't sure about.
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Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm pretty certain thermal imaging was already ruled a 'search' and required a warrant, so I'm not sure why using active radar is even a question to this judge...
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The supreme court ruling on the thermal imaging was damn conclusive in my opinion. They talked extensively about the castle doctrine that what you do in your own home is private and there is a very very high barrier for police to be able to breach that.
Though there is a difference between this case and that. The police in the thermal imaging case were scanning entire neighborhoods looking for grow lights. This appears to be a more targeted use and if there's one thing the supreme court has shown over the ye
Re:How? (Score:5, Informative)
You knock on the door to search the place. Those inside stay quiet and refuse to admit their presence. The frequency of the dopple radar is such that it penetrates the walls and is reflected by the salt water bags(people) keeping quiet - but their hearts beat and they breathe. Motions of chest walls create a detectable shift in frequency = people present, but refusing to answer the door = allowed to force entry to execute the search warrant.
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You knock on the door to search the place. Those inside stay quiet and refuse to admit their presence. The frequency of the dopple radar is such that it penetrates the walls and is reflected by the salt water bags(people) keeping quiet - but their hearts beat and they breathe. Motions of chest walls create a detectable shift in frequency = people present, but refusing to answer the door = allowed to force entry to execute the search warrant.
It is a problem if the police makes this assumption.
The radar can't tell the difference between a person or a pet. Should a cat or a reasonably well trained dog be the difference between the cops breaking down the door or not?
In the end I suspect it is going to end up to be another tool for saying "Well, the radar indicated people but no-one opened. Clearly something was wrong so we broke into the house. Turned out it was just a radar malfunction, but we dropped/found this while we were snooping around."
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dogs will bark when you knock on the door
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Yea, sure! That sounds totally infallible!
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Should a cat or a reasonably well trained dog be the difference between the cops breaking down the door or not?
Meh, a dog just gives them some target practice. SOP is to shoot any dogs on sight. Great being a suspect, right?
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ITYM "Great living next door to a suspect" or maybe "Great knowing an arsehole who things swatting is a valid way to resolve conflicts"
Please explain (Score:5, Insightful)
From that crappy summary it's practically impossible to tell what's going on. Why does the police need to know who is in a house anyway? What crime are we talking about? Being in a house? Not being in a house? I really don't get it.
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Tracking suspects requires you to know if they are still in a particular premise from time to time, to ensure they haven't slipped out without your surveillance knowing.
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Re:Please explain (Score:5, Interesting)
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Almost all of which are civil, not necessarily criminal.
And your assertion about the brothel laws is wrong - they would both have to be prostitutes to constitute a brothel under the law. Not saying you couldn't get hassle, but you couldn't be prosecuted without proving they were both/all prostitutes.
The police aren't interested in this kind of thing. If they needed to assist on a council-run benefit crackdown, it would be the council with those devices, powers and requiring warrants to use. Same as flyin
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You may be aware of the 'window tax' - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W... [wikipedia.org]
In UK, France & Scotland property tax was based upon the number of windows extant. Tax assessors can be very creative, and avoiders too.
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From that crappy summary it's practically impossible to tell what's going on. Why does the police need to know who is in a house anyway? What crime are we talking about? Being in a house? Not being in a house? I really don't get it.
If they are looking for a criminal on the run, and they have a reasonable suspicion that he is inside the house, they can search the house. If they don't have a reasonable suspicion that he is inside the house, they can't search the house. If that doppler radar shows that there is someone, anyone in the house, that makes it more likely that the person they are looking for is inside.
For "reasonable suspicion" it isn't necessary that it's more likely he is inside than not, just that there is a good chance.
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Why does the police need to know who is in a house anyway?
Because it makes the house safer to enter.
You may have played games like SWAT 4 where the tension builds when you don't know who or what lies around the next corner.
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It's one of those cases where reading the actual court decision (PDF [amlaw.com]) is better than reading the summary, because the summary is too condensed for a normal human being to understand. The decision is actually fairly short and very straightforward, and an easy read.
Here's a non-lawyer-speak summary. The police had an arrest warrant for a guy (felon, on probation, stopped reporting). They scrubbed the public databases they had access to, and found his name on an utility account for a certain address. They went
Other Tech Already Infiltrating Homes' Privacy (Score:5, Interesting)
Nest-type thermostats, entertainment streaming, alarm systems, and the beat (down) that is voluntary surrender of privacy goes on.
Re:Other Tech Already Infiltrating Homes' Privacy (Score:5, Interesting)
I like your IoT angle, so I'm going to hang my comment here (I'll tie it in to your comment at the end).
If the officer looked through the window and didn't see any other people, for example, we could intuitively factor that into the reasonable suspicion inquiry without having to think about burdens of proof.
I think it is easy to make the call with looking in the window because everyone knows how to pull their curtains. Pulling your curtains carries force of law telling government representatives, "I don't want you to look at me right now, unless you have a warrant." That is the essence of the right to be secure in ones home; that you have the authority to say that the government is not permitted to observe your home without a warrant, regardless of technological capability.
Does the same apply to Doppler radar, or IoT records? Do people have an easy and commonly known way to say, "I do not want the government to look at electromagnetic radiation or business records that indicate what is happening in my home"? If people do not have a commonly known way to indicate consent or lack thereof to be observed, which carries the same force of law as curtains, then a warrant is required to uphold the intent of the 4th.
And to address a following point that may get raised; electric meters are sometimes used as evidence of what is happening inside a house. I think that also violates the intent of the 4th.
But what we really need is not to understand the intent of the 4th. What we need is for the public to consider that the marginal cost of law enforcement may have exceeded the marginal cost of crime. That is to say; we may have too little crime relative to the cost (including the cost to liberty and dignity) of law enforcement.
electric meters (Score:3, Informative)
"And to address a following point that may get raised; electric meters are sometimes used as evidence of what is happening inside a house. I think that also violates the intent of the 4th."
In actuality, they don't do it that way for constitutional reasons and for safety of electrical workers. The power company (in California, anyway) does not tell law enforcement about abnormally high electricity consumption, because PG&E and SCE don't want bad guys with guns (in general) thinking that utility workers
After reading the actual judge's decision... (Score:4, Informative)
Interestingly, the police searched the home because they believed there might be other people and weapons present (they did find weapons), while the doppler radar only spotted one person. Here the judge decided that as far as he knew, the doppler radar was not enough evidence that there only was one person. If the doppler radar worked better, then the police could _know_ that there is one and only one person, and wouldn't be allowed to do a search in case there is someone else dangerous in the house, but that wasn't the case.
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"the police searched the home because they believed there might be other people and weapons present"
It is not illegal for people to be in a home. It is also not illegal for weapons to be in a home. The things they propose were the justification for their search were not even illegal.
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It is not illegal for people to be in a home. It is also not illegal for weapons to be in a home. The things they propose were the justification for their search were not even illegal.
Since the person they found was a known violent criminal, any weapons in the house accessible to him were illegal. And the other person who they believed to be living in the house was another known criminal. So they did a quick search to make sure that there was no other criminal holding a gun around in the house.
They were not looking for something illegal, they were looking for something _dangerous_.
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It has nothing to do with being illegal, and everything to guarantee safety.
(Well, and the other guy who lives at the house also has an arrest warrant on him...)
oh yeah...the l&e crowd will love this... (Score:1)
...if it saves just ONE policeman's life!
how expensive is this gadget? does it really work in the field like it does in the lab? is it practical?
the only real application i see for it is that it allows cops to know how many (apparently gun-toting, meth crazed) baddies are hiding in the house ready to shoot-it-out with them?
not really an everyday thing.
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Re:oh yeah...the l&e crowd will love this... (Score:5, Informative)
So long as the radar isn't being used to justify the reasonable suspicion the suspect is present needed to enter the home to serve an arrest warrant, which would constitute a search in and of itself, I don't see the problem. And note, this is only talking about using this as a tool to serve arrest warrants. They're not suggesting driving down the street and randomly scanning everybody's home. That's already out by...I can't remember the case name. The one with the infrared cameras on helicopters to find grow operations. But as a precautionary measure to help assess the number and location of occupants to a home they already have a valid warrant to search? That's fine. Makes things safer for everyone involved.
To have a valid warrant, the state needs probable cause to believe the things or persons for which they are searching are in the home. For a search warrant, a sworn witness who will say "I saw Connie_Lingus carrying the stolen TVs into the garage." For an arrest warrant, an officer staking out the home who can swear "I saw him enter the premises." But once they've got that, they're going to enter anyway.
Today, because they're scared of the gun-toting, meth crazed baddies ready to shoot it out with them, they bust down your door with overwhelming force and throw a flash bang in your baby's crib. But if they use the radar to scan the house first and see there's only one guy home sleeping in the back bedroom (plus the baby in the front), maybe they won't be so grenade-happy. Certainly it would help outrage people more (and they should already be outraged. Why they're not I don't know) to hear, "wait, they threw the grenade in the room even though they already knew there was nothing in there but a sleeping baby because of the radar?! Outrageous!"
But the really interesting question is, "does the use of the radar override the reasonable suspicion of danger which authorizes a defensive sweep of the house?" Really, the judge was asking if this should limit the search powers of the police. Right now when the police enter your home to serve a warrant they need to perform a quick sweep to make sure there isn't somebody else hiding in the back room with a gun. That's a reasonable suspicion of danger, so the police quickly scan through the house. They're not allowed to go tossing your sock drawer (unless their warrant authorizes them to toss your sock drawer) because there's little chance a baddie is hiding there. Unless he's very, very tiny...
Thing is, if during the defensive sweep, they spot evidence of a crime in one of the back rooms, they can seize that, even if it has nothing to do with the crime they're investigating. This is reasonable. They're authorized to be there, and it's in obvious sight in the room (plain view from the first few feet in the doorway. Not the sock drawer). Think bloody knife on the bed, the bodies of the toddlers you've been murdering...or your bag of weed on your night stand.
Question is, if the radar eliminates the reasonable suspicion there's somebody else hiding in the house, then performing the defensive sweep in addition to the radar sweep would be unreasonable, and so the toddler corpses would be inadmissible. And what the judge is saying is the radar isn't good enough to dispel that reasonable suspicion. Maybe one day it will be, but not yet.
It still is a better situation. If the cops are going to enter the home anyway, the more forewarning they have about the location and numbers of occupants the less likely (and certainly less justifiable) excessive use of force will be.
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you almost totally missed my point, but that's ok...i wouldn't expect the typical slash-dotter to understand my personal views on LE in this county.
carry on...you will soon live with the consequences of your police state fantasies.
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You're absolutely right, that's why they added the ability to change it. It's been done several times. There's a fairly huge difference, however, between following the process to change it, and changing how you interpret what it says. That's how you end up with torture being OK, killing American citizens without due process being OK, arbitrary suspension of habeus corpus being OK, attacking other countries at the whim of the president being OK...
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There's a fairly huge difference, however, between following the process to change it, and changing how you interpret what it says.
Apparently it wasn't to the founders. I suggest you re-read some of the rulings of the John Jay Supreme Court. John Jay being a founder and all.
That's how you end up with torture being OK, killing American citizens without due process being OK, arbitrary suspension of habeus corpus being OK, attacking other countries at the whim of the president being OK...
Never learned about the Alien and Sedition Acts [wikipedia.org], eh? That was passed during an undeclared naval war on France. It also allowed the imprisonment and deportation of people considered "dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States" and suppression of free speech by the government. You aren't actually naive enough to really think the people who wrote the Patrio
What question is there? (Score:2, Insightful)
This is not a plain senses device. Therefore a warrant is required.
It seems pretty cut and dried to me.
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They HAD an arrest warrant. The only other thing they needed in order to LEGALLY enter the house was 'reason to believe the suspect is in the house'. The radar gave them that reason to belieive. WTF is with the mods?
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Yes, but that reason to believe cannot come from an unconstitutional action, such as employing a device to 'see' through the walls of the house.
Deja Vu (Score:5, Insightful)
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Perhaps the court needs to expressly rule that the use of technology to gain information about what is going on inside someone's home constitutes a search and requires a warrant. It seems obvious to me that this is a breach of everyone's constitutional rights.
That is absolutely nonsensical. Do eye glasses count as technology? Does sitting in a car and looking out the window count as technology? Subjective laws are never a good thing.
The distinction that everyone seems to be missing is a matter of principle. Would it be legal for someone not working as a LEO to use one of these devices nonconsentually? Probably not, it would probably be considered stalking, voyeurism, etc.
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The court didn't actually say that it's different in this case, but rather that it didn't matter (as other means were used to establish the reason for the search that were sufficient in and of themselves).
Simple solution (Score:5, Insightful)
I personally would damn well want to sue/arrest my neighbor if I found out he was using doppler radar to check if I was home.
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I would take the money you're going to pay a lawyer and have someone morally challenged deal with the problem.
Re:Simple solution (Score:4, Insightful)
One point which often gets missed with the recent militarization of police forces in the US: Cops ARE civilians.
The mentalitily that they are not is a major threat to the citizenry.
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They had a warrant. It just happened to be an arrest warrant rather than a search warrant, and apparently there's some additional trickery with the former.
If you're a cop (Score:2)
Ignorance of the law is an excuse.
http://thinkprogress.org/justi... [thinkprogress.org]
UWB RAdar (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Ultra-wideband is also used in "see-through-the-wall" precision radar-imaging technology,[10][11][12] precision locating and tracking (using distance measurements between radios), and precision time-of-arrival-based localization approaches.[13] It is efficient, with a spatial capacity of approximately 1013 bit/s/m.[citation needed] UWB radar has been proposed as the active sensor component in an Automatic Target Recognition application, designed to detect humans or objects that have fallen onto subway tracks.[14]
Re: (Score:1)
Also the safety aspects for the technically minded: http://www.hindawi.com/journal... [hindawi.com]
How is this any different than thermal imaging? (Score:5, Insightful)
Cops used to peek into houses with thermal imaging until the courts told them they needed a warrant for that. This doesn't seem any different other than it radiates.
For an institution sworn to uphold the law they sure do bend it a lot when it's convenient for them.
Curtilage and the 4th Amendment (Score:3, Informative)
This is nothing new. Just because a new technologies exist does not mean we need to redefine our rights to explicitly deal with it.
Peaking in the windows of a home, using a drug dog to sniff around a house, using thermal imaging to inspect the contents of a home, using radar/x-ray vision/telekinetics/etc. to search inside of a home are ALL considered searches and should all require probable cause and a search warrant under the 4th Amendment.
[A]n individual may not legitimately demand privacy for activities conducted out of doors in fields, except in the area immediately surrounding the home...The [Fourth] Amendment reflects the recognition of the Framers that certain enclaves should be free from arbitrary government interference. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O... [wikipedia.org]
Homeowners possess a privacy interest that extends inside their homes and in the curtilage immediately surrounding the outside of their homes, but not in the "open fields" and "wooded areas" extending beyond the curtilage (see Hester v. United States, 265 U.S. 57 [1924]). - http://criminal.findlaw.com/cr... [findlaw.com]
Florida v. Jardines, 569 U.S. ___ (2013), is a decision by the United States Supreme Court which held that police use of a trained detection dog to sniff for narcotics on the front porch of a private home is a "search" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, and therefore, without consent, requires both probable cause and a search warrant. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F... [wikipedia.org]
Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001), held that the use of a thermal imaging, or FLIR, device from a public vantage point to monitor the radiation of heat from a person's home was a "search" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, and thus required a warrant. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K... [wikipedia.org]
I believe this is already covered by scotus... (Score:2)
In this case, the police used FLIR (Forward Looking Infra Red) cameras equipped on a police helicopter to look at the heat signatures through the walls of a house.
The courts ruled (5-4) that doing such is a defacto search of the property and a clear 4th amendment violation.
The point of the ruling, is not the intrusiveness or the technical means by which the police overcome the
Is this to circumvent the recent Kyllo ruling? (Score:1)
Quote from Wikipedia: "Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001), held that the use of a thermal imaging, or FLIR, device from a public vantage point to monitor the radiation of heat from a person's home was a "search" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, and thus required a warrant."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K... [wikipedia.org]
Is this intended to use imaging that is NOT thermal imaging so that a warrant is not required? Someone clear this up for me
Re: (Score:2)
No, it does not. The court decision in this case doesn't actually rule whether the use of the radar constituted an illegal search or not.
Re: (Score:1)
If they are so sure something bad is going on why not just left them use the standard of probably cause and get the proper warrant.
Re: (Score:2)
They had an arrest warrant. They were there only to arrest him. Previous SCOTUS rulings said police can enter a residence with an arrest warrent if there is 'reason to beleive the suspect is within'. Police said use of radar was part of what gave them reason to think he was in there.