COURT ERODES HOME PRIVACY

A man's home is not his castle, any longer, nor is a woman's home her
private domain. In a split decision that should concern Canadians, the
Supreme Court of Canada Wednesday issued a ruling that allows police
to intrude on the sanctity of homes without a warrant. It is, as Chief
Justice Beverley McLachlin and Justice Morris Fish said in a
dissenting opinion, an "incremental but ominous step toward the
erosion of the right to privacy."

The case involved Daniel Gomboc, a Calgary man suspected of using his
home as a marijuana grow-op because police thought they could smell
marijuana and there was condensation on the plastic-covered windows,
steam coming from the vents and no snow on the roof.

Police asked the company that supplied power to the house to measure
the consumption -- grow-ops use an inordinate amount of electricity --
and used those records to obtain a search warrant. Gomboc was
convicted of growing marijuana and trafficking in it, a verdict that
was overturned by the Alberta Court of Appeal on the grounds that the
police request for the power company to install a sophisticated
monitoring device in his home violated his right to privacy.

In a split decision, the Supreme Court disagreed, with the majority
stating that "the Constitution does not cloak the home in an
impenetrable veil of secrecy" and to expect that it should would be
"impractical" and "unreasonable."

Canadians learned long ago not to expect that cloak from their Supreme
Court. Previous court decisions already allow police to root through
our garbage and inspect our electrical bills without warrants.

The division within the court was clear. Chief Justice McLachlin
argued that the Gomboc case takes this intrusion further. A
"reasonable person" who subscribes to a cable service should not have
to expect that the state could then monitor his viewing habits or his
email or that it would "authorize the police to enter our homes,
physically or electronically... without prior judicial
authorization."

The majority on the court disagreed with her, however, overturning the
Alberta Court of Appeal's earlier ruling that Canadians have a broad
right to privacy in their homes and that "the state has no business in
the homes of the nation without invitation or judicial authorization."
After Wednesday's ruling, unfortunately, Canadians can no longer
expect such privacy in what the two dissenting judges called their
"most private of dwellings."