COURT LIMITS POLICE'S HIGH-TECH SEARCH OF HOMES

Justices Protect Privacy In A 5-To-4 Ruling Against The Use Of Thermal Imaging.

The US Supreme Court has drawn the curtains, closed the blinds, and
firmly shut the door on the unsupervised use of law-enforcement
technology to detect crimes in private homes.

The result: American homes are today more private than they were yesterday.

In a major decision that strengthens privacy protections in the face
of increasingly sophisticated law-enforcement snooping devices, the
high court ruled yesterday that police must obtain a warrant from a
neutral judge prior to using technology that reveals even relatively
minor details about what's going on inside a private home.

"The use of technology in this way clearly exposes private
information concealed in the home," says James Tomkovicz, a professor
at the University of Iowa College of Law. The ruling, he adds, may
set a standard on when technology triggers constitutional protections.

"The Fourth Amendment values privacy in the home above all else, and
technology makes it possible ... without physically intruding [the
way] the British did [when] the Constitution was framed," says Mr.
Tomkovicz, who filed an amicus brief for the American Civil Liberties
Union and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

Police are not required to get a judge's authorization before using
technological surveillance devices that merely record information
about a home that is exposed to public view. But in its 5-to-4
ruling, the court says the use of the technology requires a warrant
when a device could uncover information about activities inside a
home that police could not have obtained otherwise.

The ruling sets a benchmark for police who are in a position to use
intrusive high-tech surveillance tools. "The Fourth Amendment draws a
firm line at the entrance to the house," writes Justice Antonin
Scalia for the majority. "That line, we think, must be not only firm,
but also bright."

Civil libertarians were warning that high-tech snooping by law
enforcement was threatening to undermine the Fourth Amendment's
prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures. They had urged the
court to head off a potential explosion of privacy-rights litigation
by setting a clear standard to cover the types of information
gathered by newly emerging technologies.

Law-enforcement officials countered that such devices should require
a warrant only if they reveal intimate details inside a home.

The high court's ruling relates to the marijuana conviction of Danny
Kyllo of Florence, Ore., whose home was raided by drug agents after a
thermal-imaging device showed a higher amount of heat emanating from
his house than from neighboring structures.

The device detects infrared radiation and shows it as visible light.
Drug agents suspected the heat was being produced by banks of
high-intensity light bulbs in a marijuana-growing operation inside
Mr. Kyllo's home.

Armed in part with the thermal-imaging observations, agents obtained
a search warrant and raided the Kyllo home. Inside, they found more
than 100 marijuana plants, weapons, and marijuana-growing equipment.

Kyllo's lawyer challenged the legality of the search, saying agents
should have obtained a search warrant from a judge prior to using the
thermal-imaging device.

Lawyers for the drug agents countered that the device recorded the
thermal image of the home from a car parked in a street. They said
the procedure was no more intrusive to Kyllo's privacy than had
agents taken a photo or videotaped the home from the street.

In reversing a lower court ruling, the court majority said the
thermal image of the heat gave investigators key additional
information about Kyllo's activities inside the house.

But the majority stopped short of reversing Kyllo's conviction.
Instead, the court remanded the case back to a federal judge in
Oregon to determine if investigators had enough other evidence when
they applied for their search warrant to justify the raid.

Alexandra Marks contributed to this report from New York.