Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Deadheads -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Estimated Prophet who wrote (26264)	6/11/2001 11:50:14 AM
From: SIer formerly known as Joe B.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 49844

Supreme Court Rules Thermal Imaging Is a Search Monday June 11 11:09 AM ET news.yahoo.com By James Vicini WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) ruled on Monday that thermal imaging to record the amount of heat emanating from a house, a police practice often used to help detect illegal drugs, represented a search covered by constitutional privacy protections. The court's 5-4 ruling was a setback for the U.S. Justice Department (news - web sites), which argued the use of a thermal imager by law enforcement officers to detect the heat emitted from a house was not a search and was not covered by the privacy protections. Justice Antonin Scalia (news - web sites) said for the court majority that when the government uses a device not in general public use to explore the details of a private home that would previously been unknowable without physical intrusion, the surveillance is a search and requires a warrant. He said use of the device, aimed at a private home from a public street to detect, constituted a search. To withdraw such a minimum expectation of privacy against unreasonable searches would permit ``police technology to erode the privacy'' guaranteed by the Constitution, Scalia said. Scalia rejected the Justice Department's argument that the thermal imaging was constitutionally allowed because it did not detect ``intimate details.'' The case began with an investigation by William Elliott, an agent of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (news - web sites), into a possible conspiracy to grow marijuana in Oregon. Suspecting that Danny Kyllo might be involved, the agent examined Kyllo's utility records and found he used an abnormally high amount of electricity -- which could suggest the use of intensity lights to grow marijuana in his house.