Justice Sandra Day O'Connor noted that the court has allowed drug-sniffing dogs to inspect property without a warrant. Lerner countered that such practice has been permitted only in the narcotics context and in public places. She also questioned how intrusive the heat-scan really is. She noted that a lower court judge had found that the device did not show any activity within the walls of the structure. We believe they do not.
Heat loss is.
Souter asked why the justices shouldn't be guided by a 1967 case in which the court said police needed a warrant to put a listening device on a public phone booth used by suspected bookmakers. Here we are talking about heat loss. Justice Stephen Breyer focused on the personal information that can be inferred from the heat loss. Dreeben insisted that thermal imagers couldn't reveal activities inside the home. In the Kyllo case, the only inference was a different level of heat loss from his house compared with nearby structures, he said.