Privacy Vs. Technology in High Court Case

Feb. 20 -- At 3:20 a.m. one January morning in 1992, an Oregon national guardsman assisting in a federal investigation sat in the passenger seat of a parked car and watched an apartment triplex under suspicion for drug activity.

Thanks to cutting-edge technology originally designed for the military, the guardsman relied on more than the naked eye to watch the property.

Wielding a thermal imaging device, a camera-like gadget that identifies infrared radiation, the agent detected an unusual amount of heat being lost from an apartment occupied by Danny Lee Kyllo. The device, called an Agema Thermovision 210, scanned Kyllo's home and recorded white blotches along the roofline and along one wall of the garage, indicating excessive heat in those areas.

Eleven days later, law enforcement agents burst into Kyllo's Florence, Ore., home with a search warrant and found more than 100 marijuana plants growing in the attic along with heat lamps and other drug paraphernalia.

Today, in a case that pits technology against privacy rights, the U.S. Supreme Court considers whether the warrantless use of the thermal imaging device constituted an unlawful search under the 4th Amendment of the Constitution. How the court rules in this case could shape the guidelines governing how law enforcement officials use technology to conduct searches.

An Exploitative Technology?

Based on the evidence seized during the search, Kyllo was indicted for manufacturing marijuana and was sentenced to 63 months in prison. But Kyllo appealed, arguing the police should have had a warrant before they used the thermal imager.

The imaging device intruded into activities within his home, Kyllo argues, where he has an expectation of privacy. Just because technology exists to detect what people are doing inside their homes does not mean police have the right to use it without proper constitutional protections of personal privacy, his attorney argues.

"Technology that exploits invisible, sub-sensory phenomena ultimately fails to respect the traditional boundaries of society, and therefore leaves the population defenseless against such surveillance," Kyllo's attorney Kenneth Lerner wrote in court papers.