IN OTHER WORDS - CAMERAS LOOK BUT CAN'T SEE

The Supreme Court took a practical approach to surveillance technology
when it decided police don't need to get a search warrant before using
heat-sensing cameras to check houses for signs of illegal marijuana
grow-ops. It also sent a very clear message that it might not be so
accommodating as the technology improves.

In a unanimous decision, Canada's top court decided that the police
did not invade a person's privacy unduly when they used an infrared
camera to look for hot spots in a house that could be a sign that
illegal drugs were being grown there.

The Supreme Court's ruling hinged on how much information an infrared
camera trained on a house can say about what's going on inside.

Current technology can detect unusually high levels of heat (possibly
generated by halide lamps) in general, but it can't reveal specific
details of what someone inside that house is doing. The lower-court
decision declaring the infrared surveys unconstitutional anticipated
improvements in the technology that would make it possible someday to
"see" inside a house.

But Justice Ian Binnie and his Supreme Court colleagues focused
instead on the actual state of technology, which did not unreasonably
intrude on an individual's privacy.

That said, Justice Binnie made it clear that when the technology
develops to allow infrared cameras to detect actual activity inside a
building, "it will be a different case, and the courts will have to
deal with its privacy implications at that time in light of the facts
as they then exist."

Until then, marijuana growers will have reason to fear infrared
cameras, but the rest of us will not.