RIGHT TO PRIVACY AT HOME HAS LIMITS, TOP COURT RULES

The right to privacy in one's home is not absolute, the Supreme Court
of Canada said yesterday in a ruling that allowed police to conscript
a Calgary power company to collect details of a customer's electricity
use to determine whether he was growing marijuana.

In a divided decision, the court split into three camps on whether it
violates a consumer's constitutional right to privacy to force
commercial service providers to help out police when they do not have
search warrants.

"The Constitution does not cloak the home in an impenetrable veil of
privacy," Justice Marie Deschamps wrote in the lead opinion.

In a strong dissent, Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin and Justice
Morris Fish warned the court against taking an "incremental but
ominous step toward the erosion of the right to privacy."

The decision overturns an Alberta Court of Appeal victory for Daniel
Gomboc and restores his earlier convictions for growing and selling
marijuana.

Calgary police, while investigating another matter in Gomboc's
neighbourhood in 2004, detected the smell of a marijuana grow operation.

The police then had Enmax, Gomboc's power supplier, install a "digital
recording ammeter" to obtain a graph printout of five days of power
consumption at his home. The officers used the information to obtain a
search warrant.