POLICE USING 'BIRD' IN DRUG WAR

DES MOINES -- There's a growing use of satellites as a weapon in the war on
drugs.

Police in Central Iowa are using it, but authorities are hesitant to talk
about it, according to a copyright story in the Des Moines Sunday Register.

However, defense lawyers, civil libertarians, and private investigators
raise concerns about possible abuses of electronic eyes in the sky.

Authorities say satellite surveillance, though seldom used, has been
possible in Iowa for several years, thanks largely to a generous
federal-grant program. Few people know it exists.

"That's a new one on me, and it's intriguing," said defense lawyer Dean
Stowers. "That's a unique surveillance technique, at least in this neck of
the woods."

Urbandale police Sgt. Rob Johansen said investigators "really don't want
people to know that we use this at all."

"We don't want the bad guys to know what we're doing, obviously," he said.

In one Iowa case, members of a drug task force followed a pickup truck for
months through a court-approved use of a secretly installed global
positioning system. It was part of an investigation into an alleged
methamphetamine dealer.

The suspect, Bounchanh Nola, now faces federal drug-dealing charges and
accusations that he is linked to a major meth supply ring.

The satellite tracking device, using technology similar to anti-theft
equipment in some cars, eventually led authorities to obtain search warrants
for Nola's home and eight houses he visited frequently.

Johansen said Nola's case was the second use of a satellite-tracking system
since a suburban narcotics task force obtained one of the devices.

In the first case, the tracking device's battery died after one day,
Johansen said, and investigators lost the car for weeks. It later was
discovered wrecked, parked in a garage with the device still attached.

Johansen said his task force anticipates using the technique more often --
although probably not more than twice a year or so -- on the most complex
cases.

"It's complicated, and it's hard to get on the cars," Johansen said.

It's also difficult for some lawyers and civil libertarians to accept.

Experts say little legal protection from such devices exists, because
federal judges traditionally have viewed them as mere extensions of a
detective's eyes and ears. Police are allowed to track any movement that can
be viewed from a public area.

Judge Douglas Staskal, who approved the installation of the device on Nola's
vehicle, said the biggest constitutional issue is not use of the devices but
the potential intrusion caused by installing them. Warrants might be needed
for police to search the car but not to hide something under it.

"If the car's in a public place, the cases that are there say that that's
not, in and of itself, a search," Staskal said. "If your car's parked in a
public place, I could stick one of those on it."

UI law Professor Jim Tomkovicz agrees that the law "considers it not to be a
search, therefore you don't need probable cause."

Johansen disagrees, noting that local investigators have been told by the
Polk County attorney's office that they need a warrant for any use of the
device.

The devices have come to local law-enforcement agencies through the
Technology Transfer Program, a 5-year-old federal program that provides
equipment and training for police around the country.

"I can't tell you who's got the equipment and who doesn't," said Al
Overbaugh, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Des Moines. "But
it's been out there for a while."

All this concerns Ben Stone, the executive director of the Iowa Civil
Liberties Union.

"It's way too easy for law enforcement just to fall back on using the
technology to invade people's privacy just because it's nifty and it might
be easier," he said.