FLIR CAMERAS BACK ON AND LOOKING FOR GROW HOUSES

Legal Briefs

You may have followed the legal history of forward-looking infrared radar
(FLIR).

FLIR cameras are used by police aircraft to help locate marijuana grow
houses. They would use the FLIR as one ground for getting a warrant to
search the house. The Ontario Court of Appeal had ruled that the police
could not use FLIR without first getting a warrant on other grounds.

Canada is becoming a hot spot for marijuana growers. In the States, people
go to jail for decades for that kind of thing. Here, the penalties are
much, much more lenient. Even drug dealers can figure out that it is better
to grow the maryjane here than in the States.

Growing pot in fields has its risks. Neighbours and police aircraft can
spot the crops. Our growing season is hardly long. Poachers can cause a
problem (there was a shooting as a result of a poaching attempt in Port
Perry a few years ago.)

Some pot dealer had a great idea: buy houses in nice subdivisions and turn
them into pot factories. They would bypass the hydro meters for most of
their power, install lots of lights and crank out the pot.

The only ways of detecting these operations are: (1) alert neighbours; (2)
luck (e.g. a fire caused by faulty wiring); or, (3) using FLIR technology
to spot houses that have abnormally high levels of heat radiating from them.

The Ontario Court of Appeal decided it was an unreasonable invasion of our
privacy to use FLIR. I'll give you one guess who was happy about that decision.

We then had a situation where the police had to rely on tips or luck to
find these houses. These houses are fire traps, they steal power (that ends
up costing all of us), the growers have guns to protect the crops and they
are cranking out the pot by the truckload.

It was a pot grower's heaven.

Thankfully, the Supreme Court of Canada said that the Court of Appeal was
wrong. People cannot expect to have an expectation of privacy of what is
going on OUTSIDE their houses. Remember, even though FLIR sees what we
cannot see with our naked eyes, it is only seeing the heat that is going
through the roof. FLIR, at this stage of its development, cannot see what
is going on inside a house. If, in the future, it becomes sufficiently
advanced to do so, I'm sure that the use of the technology will be limited.

So, when you hear that police chopper hovering around your neighbourhood,
be thankful. The police have the cameras on and are looking for the
gun-toting drug dealers. If you are so inclined, you might check your local
police service Web site for tips on how to spot a grow house. If you see a
house that looks like a grow-op, you can then make the anonymous call to
Crime Stoppers and the chopper will likely do a flyby to see if the heat
signature is suspicious.