PRIVACY PROTECTION

"The Fourth Amendment draws a firm line at the entrance to the house." So
declared the Supreme Court on Monday in an important 5-to-4 ruling. The
ruling reaffirmed the basic right of privacy that Americans are
constitutionally entitled to enjoy in their own homes in an era when
high-tech devices make it possible for police to snoop without any physical
intrusion.

The case concerns the use of a thermal imaging device by federal officers
in Oregon who suspected that marijuana was being cultivated in a private
home, using special, intense lighting. The government argued, and four
dissenting justices agreed, that no warrant was needed because the infrared
scan merely measured "waste heat" emitted from the exterior of the home,
and that the images obtained were too murky to reveal "intimate" private
information or disclose much about "private activities" in "private areas"
of the house.

But Justice Antonin Scalia had no trouble rejecting such flimsy excuses for
evading the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement. Writing for a
five-member majority that covered the court's ideological spectrum, he said
in part: "In the home . . . all details are intimate details, because the
entire area is held safe from prying government eyes," adding that
homeowners should not be "at the mercy of advanced technology."

The decision serves notice that police need to obtain a warrant before
using any device not in general public use to gain details about a person's
private home that could not otherwise be discovered without physical
intrusion -- a legal approach that might be read to bar warrantless use of
the Internet wire technology known as Carnivore, as Representative Dick
Armey noted yesterday.

In setting a sound legal standard, Justice Scalia and his colleagues have
given basic privacy rights important protections against the misuse of high
technology.