The U.S. Supreme Court will soon address those questions in an Oregon case in which police without a search warrant used an infrared camera known as a ''thermal imager'' to detect heat coming from a home where Danny Lee Kyllo was using powerful lights to grow marijuana. Kyllo pleaded guilty but appealed the imaging all the way to the nation's highest court. He argued that using the imager constituted a search in itself, requiring a warrant. Law enforcers, civil libertarians, lawyers and scholars await the court's ruling in Kyllo's case, which is expected by next month. You might feel it's OK to give up some privacy for that.
Police say imagers make their job safer and more efficient.
Police can then use the images to get a warrant from a judge to search inside. Some police agencies announce when they're trying new surveillance technology in an effort to gauge the public's view of their reasonableness and to allay concerns about secret spying on ordinary, law-abiding citizens. But that disclosure also may teach attentive criminals what to look out for. The more people know about it, the easier it is for people to defeat it and make it worthless. Skeptics say the high-tech surveillance gear goes too far.