EDITORIAL: HIGH-TECH INTRUSION

Drug agents used a thermal imager to try to figure out what was going
on in the home of Danny L. Kyllo. The instrument can detect infrared
radiation, which is to say that it can pick up on unusual heat. The
agents were thus able to figure out that Kyllo was probably using
lots of light bulbs to help grow marijuana. They were then able to
obtain a search warrant; they found marijuana, and they arrested
Kyllo.

The case is now in the U.S. Supreme Court, where the justices will
decide if agents standing outside a home and looking inside by means
of such a device is equivalent to the unconstitutional practice of an
unreasonable search. If common sense is a guide, it is.

The government contends the imager did not reveal private activities,
but if government agents had not been able to establish certain facts
about the inside of Kyllo's house through their wall-invading imager,
there may have been no arrest.

In a case such as this one, which involves high-tech instruments the
country's founders never imagined, it obviously is crucial to focus
on the principle incorporated in the constitutional language that
they crafted. They had to have understood that unfettered searches by
police could in fact result in bringing large numbers of criminals to
justice. Their concern clearly was something else: to protect the
dignity of the person from governmental intrusiveness and make homes
as nearly inviolable under law as reasonableness would permit - even
at the risk of some criminals escaping detection.

Technology has given the government any number of new tools with
which to invade your privacy. One newspaper account notes that the
government can spy on your back yard from satellites in space or
listen to your conversations with family and friends by means of
sophisticated instruments. Isn't that as much an unreasonable search
as the prying eyes of a government agent who broke into your house?

It is the principle that counts, and in this high-tech age, it is
more vital than ever that the courts not be overly literal in their
reading of the Constitution.

If they are, they will invite its abridgment.