On Mon, 2 Jul 2012, Christopher Howard wrote:
> For the sake of discussion, here are some more questions: (I'm not
> claiming to be the expert here, or to have all the answers.)
>
> 1. Can law enforcement legally use remote surveillance to monitor you
> activities inside a private structure, without a warrant? E.g., are
> they allowed to point a powerful telescope through the window of your
> home (without getting a warrant) and record everything you've done in
> your living room, and would that count as legally admissible evidence?
> (If there was a bill preventing that, I'd be glad to sign on to it.)
As Erinn already mentioned, no--a warrant is needed. I remember something
called a "Glass" warrant being needed to record phone calls. Regardless,
a warrent is called for in cases like that. Keep in mind the law
enforcement perspective--if the case is important enough to require
spending resources on the surveillance of a suspect inside a structure,
why jeopardize the case by not acquiring the warrant?
> 2. Does "expectation of privacy" include just the inside of your
> shuttered home, or is it any place that is not "public"? E.g., suppose
> you are sitting in your backyard, behind a grove of trees, where
> normally no one would be able to see you from the highway.
Expectation of privacy is a basic legal concept, where a normal person
would reasonably be able to expect to have privacy from being overheard,
for example. Inside a telephone booth you could reasonably expect
privacy, for example. Walking down the sidewalk of a busy street, no.
> 3. Outside of drone technology, is there any technology that can
> easily track your activity (with photography) everywhere you go? If
> you were walking the main streets of San Diego, you might expect there
> to be a hidden camera at every corner (maybe there should be a law
> against that as well...?), but what about when you are walking the
> suburbs, or hiking through the woods? What else can they do in those
> cases, except assign a police unit to you? (Which is relatively
> speaking rather expensive.)
As Jim touched on there is exotic stuff like IR (infrared) camera, RADAR,
etc. Law enforcement makes use of IR (think FLIR on helicopters), SWAT
(in Anchorage it's called CIRT, Troopers have SERT) teams have access to
IR googles. But seriously, if the special tactical teams are being
deployed it's because something is seriously, seriously wrong and
immediate action is required.
> H.R. 5925 doesn't mention anything at all about "expectation" of
> privacy, it simply states that the Feds must get a warrant to use a
> drone to "gather [any] evidence or other information pertaining to
> criminal conduct or conduct in violation of a regulation".
No, it doesn't surprise me that it doesn't mention expectation of privacy.
In fact, I think it intentionally doesn't because it's trying to increase
individual privacy protections beyond what is currently accepted/defined.
> I'm not saying other methods of surveillance aren't a concern, but
> this is the only surveillance-related bill I see in the House at the
> moment.
Another thing about this is that there are already cameras all over the
place. We don't make use of them anywhere near to the extent that Britain
does--they have cameras on every street corner and law enforcement
actively use them, and do so proactively (vs. investigating a crime after
the fact). However, a great example of Anchorage law enforcement using
existing cameras for investigation is the recent arson at the New Sagaya
in downtown Anchorage. You can see some frames of it on ktuu.com. I
believe the camera belongs to New Sagaya or a neighboring business, but it
could just as easily have been a traffic camera.
Mike
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Received on Tue Jul 3 09:28:17 2012
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