Source: http://haqgko.czechian.net/313-thermal-imaging-legal-kyllo-v-united-state-term-papers.php
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 08:28:21+00:00

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This case presents the question whether the use of a thermal-imaging device aimed at a private home from a public street to detect relative amounts of heat within the home constitutes a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.
In 1991 Agent William Elliott of the United States Department of the Interior came to suspect that marijuana was being grown in the home belonging to petitioner Danny Kyllo, part of a triplex on Rhododendron Drive in Florence, Oregon. Indoor marijuana growth typically requires high-intensity lamps. In order to determine whether an amount of heat was emanating from petitioners home consistent with the use of such lamps, at 3:20 a.m. on January 16, 1992, Agent Elliott and Dan Haas used an Agema Thermovision 210 thermal imager to scan the triplex. Thermal imagers detect infrared radiation, which virtually all objects emit but which is not visible to the naked eye. The imager converts radiation into images based on relative warmthblack is cool, white is hot, shades of gray connote relative differences; in that respect, it operates somewhat like a video camera showing heat images. The scan of Kyllos home took only a few minutes and was performed from the passenger seat of Agent Elliotts vehicle across the street from the front of the house and also from the street in back of the house. The scan showed that the roof over the garage and a side wall of petitioners home were relatively hot compared to the rest of the home and substantially warmer than neighboring homes in the triplex. Agent Elliott concluded that petitioner was using halide lights to grow marijuana in his house, which indeed he was. Based on tips from informants, utility bills, and the thermal imaging, a Federal Magistrate Judge issued a warrant authorizing a search of petitioners home, and the agents found an indoor growing operation involving more than 100 plants. Petitioner was indicted on one count of manufacturing marijuana, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1). He unsuccessfully moved to suppress the evidence seized from his home and then entered a conditional guilty plea.
The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit remanded the case for an evidentiary hearing regarding the intrusiveness of thermal imaging. On remand the District Court found that the Agema 210 is a non-intrusive device which emits no rays or beams and shows a crude visual image of the heat being radiated from the outside of the house; it did not show any people or activity within the walls of the structure; [t]he device used cannot penetrate walls or windows to reveal conversations or human activities; and [n]o intimate details of the home were observed. Supp. App. to Pet. for Cert. 3940. Based on these findings, the District Court upheld the validity of the warrant that relied in part upon the thermal imaging, and reaffirmed its denial of the motion to suppress. A divided Court of Appeals initially reversed, 140 F.3d 1249 (1998), but that opinion was withdrawn and the panel (after a change in composition) affirmed, 190 F.3d 1041 (1999), with Judge Noonan dissenting. The court held that petitioner had shown no subjective expectation of privacy because he had made no attempt to conceal the heat escaping from his home, id., at 1046, and even if he had, there was no objectively reasonable expectation of privacy because the imager did not expose any intimate details of Kyllos life, only amorphous hot spots on the roof and exterior wall, id., at 1047. We granted certiorari. 530 U.S. 1305 (2000).
The Fourth Amendment provides that [t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated. At the very core of the Fourth Amendment stands the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion. Silverman v. United States, 365 U.S. 505, 511 (1961). With few exceptions, the question whether a warrantless search of a home is reasonable and hence constitutional must be answered no. See Illinois v. Rodriguez, 497 U.S. 177, 181 (1990); Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 586 (1980).
One might think that the new validating rationale would be that examining the portion of a house that is in plain public view, while it is a search1 despite the absence of trespass, is not an unreasonable one under the Fourth Amendment. See Minnesota v. Carter, 525 U.S. 83, 104 (1998) (Breyer, J., concurring in judgment). But in fact we have held that visual observation is no search at allperhaps in order to preserve somewhat more intact our doctrine that warrantless searches are presumptively unconstitutional. See Dow Chemical Co. v. United States, 476 U.S. 227, 234235, 239 (1986). In assessing when a search is not a search, we have applied somewhat in reverse the principle first enunciated in Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967). Katz involved eavesdropping by means of an electronic listening device placed on the outside of a telephone bootha location not within the catalog (persons, houses, papers, and effects) that the Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches. We held that the Fourth Amendment nonetheless protected Katz from the warrantless eavesdropping because he justifiably relied upon the privacy of the telephone booth. Id., at 353. As Justice Harlans oft-quoted concurrence described it, a Fourth Amendment search occurs when the government violates a subjective expectation of privacy that society recognizes as reasonable. See id., at 361. We have subsequently applied this principle to hold that a Fourth Amendment search does not occureven when the explicitly protected location of a house is concernedunless the individual manifested a subjective expectation of privacy in the object of the challenged search, and society [is] willing to recognize that expectation as reasonable. Ciraolo, supra, at 211. We have applied this test in holding that it is not a search for the police to use a pen register at the phone company to determine what numbers were dialed in a private home, Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 743744 (1979), and we have applied the test on two different occasions in holding that aerial surveillance of private homes and surrounding areas does not constitute a search, Ciraolo, supra; Florida v. Riley, 488 U.S. 445 (1989).
The present case involves officers on a public street engaged in more than naked-eye surveillance of a home. We have previously reserved judgment as to how much technological enhancement of ordinary perception from such a vantage point, if any, is too much. While we upheld enhanced aerial photography of an industrial complex in Dow Chemical, we noted that we found it important that this is not an area immediately adjacent to a private home, where privacy expectations are most heightened, 476 U.S., at 237, n. 4 (emphasis in original).
Limiting the prohibition of thermal imaging to intimate details would not only be wrong in principle; it would be impractical in application, failing to provide a workable accommodation between the needs of law enforcement and the interests protected by the Fourth Amendment, Oliver v. United States, 466 U.S. 170, 181 (1984). To begin with, there is no necessary connection between the sophistication of the surveillance equipment and the intimacy of the details that it observeswhich means that one cannot say (and the police cannot be assured) that use of the relatively crude equipment at issue here will always be lawful. The Agema Thermovision 210 might disclose, for example, at what hour each night the lady of the house takes her daily sauna and batha detail that many would consider intimate; and a much more sophisticated system might detect nothing more intimate than the fact that someone left a closet light on. We could not, in other words, develop a rule approving only that through-the-wall surveillance which identifies objects no smaller than 36 by 36 inches, but would have to develop a jurisprudence specifying which home activities are intimate and which are not. And even when (if ever) that jurisprudence were fully developed, no police officer would be able to know in advance whether his through-the-wall surveillance picks up intimate detailsand thus would be unable to know in advance whether it is constitutional.
We have said that the Fourth Amendment draws a firm line at the entrance to the house, Payton, 445 U.S., at 590. That line, we think, must be not only firm but also brightwhich requires clear specification of those methods of surveillance that require a warrant. While it is certainly possible to conclude from the videotape of the thermal imaging that occurred in this case that no significant compromise of the homeowners privacy has occurred, we must take the long view, from the original meaning of the Fourth Amendment forward.
The Fourth Amendment is to be construed in the light of what was deemed an unreasonable search and seizure when it was adopted, and in a manner which will conserve public interests as well as the interests and rights of individual citizens. Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 149 (1925).
Where, as here, the Government uses a device that is not in general public use, to explore details of the home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion, the surveillance is a search and is presumptively unreasonable without a warrant.
Since we hold the Thermovision imaging to have been an unlawful search, it will remain for the District Court to determine whether, without the evidence it provided, the search warrant issued in this case was supported by probable causeand if not, whether there is any other basis for supporting admission of the evidence that the search pursuant to the warrant produced.
(a) The question whether a warrantless search of a home is reasonable and hence constitutional must be answered no in most instances, but the antecedent question whether a Fourth Amendment "search" has occurred is not so simple. This Court has approved warrantless visual surveillance of a home, see California v. Ciraolo,476 U. S. 207, 213, ruling that visual observation is no "search" at all, see Dow Chemical Co. v. United States, 476 U. S. 227, 234-235, 239. In assessing when a search is not a search, the Court has adapted a principle first enunciated in Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347, 361: A "search" does not occur--even when its object is a house explicitly protected by the Fourth Amendment--unless the individual manifested a subjective expectation of privacy in the searched object, and society is willing to recognize that expectation as reasonable, see, e.g.,California v. Ciraolo, supra, at 211. Pp. 3-5.
(b) While it may be difficult to refine the Katz test in some instances, in the case of the search of a home's interior--the prototypical and hence most commonly litigated area of protected privacy--there is a ready criterion, with roots deep in the common law, of the minimal expectation of privacy that exists, and that is acknowledged to be reasonable. To withdraw protection of this minimum expectation would be to permit police technology to erode the privacy guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment. Thus, obtaining by sense-enhancing technology any information regarding the home's interior that could not otherwise have been obtained without physical "intrusion into a constitutionally protected area," Silverman v. United States,365 U. S. 505, 512, constitutes a search--at least where (as here) the technology in question is not in general public use. This assures preservation of that degree of privacy against government that existed when the Fourth Amendment was adopted. Pp. 6-7.
There is no need for the Court to craft a new rule to decide this case, as it is controlled by established principles from our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. One of those core principles, of course, is that "searches and seizures inside a home without a warrant are presumptively unreasonable." Payton v. New York,445 U. S. 573, 586 (1980) (emphasis added). But it is equally well settled that searches and seizures of property in plain view are presumptively reasonable. See id., at 586-587.2 Whether that property is residential or commercial, the basic principle is the same: " `What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection.' " California v. Ciraolo,476 U. S. 207, 213 (1986) (quoting Katz v. United States,389 U. S. 347, 351 (1967)); see Florida v. Riley,488 U. S. 445, 449-450 (1989); California v. Greenwood,486 U. S. 35, 40-41 (1988); Dow Chemical Co. v. United States,476 U. S. 227, 235-236 (1986); Air Pollution Variance Bd. of Colo. v. Western Alfalfa Corp.,416 U. S. 861, 865 (1974). That is the principle implicated here.
While the Court "take[s] the long view" and decides this case based largely on the potential of yet-to-be-developed technology that might allow "through-the-wall surveillance," ante, at 11-12; see ante, at 8, n. 3, this case involves nothing more than off-the-wall surveillance by law enforcement officers to gather information exposed to the general public from the outside of petitioner's home. All that the infrared camera did in this case was passively measure heat emitted from the exterior surfaces of petitioner's home; all that those measurements showed were relative differences in emission levels, vaguely indicating that some areas of the roof and outside walls were warmer than others. As still images from the infrared scans show, see Appendix, infra, no details regarding the interior of petitioner's home were revealed. Unlike an x-ray scan, or other possible "through-the-wall" techniques, the detection of infrared radiation emanating from the home did not accomplish "an unauthorized physical penetration into the premises," Silverman v. United States,365 U. S. 505, 509 (1961), nor did it "obtain information that it could not have obtained by observation from outside the curtilage of the house," United States v. Karo,468 U. S. 705, 715 (1984).
On the other hand, the countervailing privacy interest is at best trivial. After all, homes generally are insulated to keep heat in, rather than to prevent the detection of heat going out, and it does not seem to me that society will suffer from a rule requiring the rare homeowner who both intends to engage in uncommon activities that produce extraordinary amounts of heat, and wishes to conceal that production from outsiders, to make sure that the surrounding area is well insulated. Cf. United States v. Jacobsen,466 U. S. 109, 122 (1984) ("The concept of an interest in privacy that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable is, by its very nature, critically different from the mere expectation, however well justified, that certain facts will not come to the attention of the authorities"). The interest in concealing the heat escaping from one's house pales in significance to the "the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed," the "physical entry of the home," United States v. United States Dist. Court for Eastern Dist. of Mich.,407 U. S. 297, 313 (1972), and it is hard to believe that it is an interest the Framers sought to protect in our Constitution.
It is clear, however, that the category of "sense-enhancing technology" covered by the new rule, ante, at 6, is far too broad. It would, for example, embrace potential mechanical substitutes for dogs trained to react when they sniff narcotics. But in United States v. Place,462 U. S. 696, 707 (1983), we held that a dog sniff that "discloses only the presence or absence of narcotics" does "not constitute a `search' within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment," and it must follow that sense-enhancing equipment that identifies nothing but illegal activity is not a search either. Nevertheless, the use of such a device would be unconstitutional under the Court's rule, as would the use of other new devices that might detect the odor of deadly bacteria or chemicals for making a new type of high explosive, even if the devices (like the dog sniffs) are "so limited in both the manner in which" they obtain information and "in the content of the information" they reveal. Ibid. If nothing more than that sort of information could be obtained by using the devices in a public place to monitor emissions from a house, then their use would be no more objectionable than the use of the thermal imager in this case.
The Government cites our statement in California v. Ciraolo,476 U. S. 207 (1986), noting apparent agreement with the State of California that aerial surveillance of a house's curtilage could become " `invasive' " if " `modern technology' " revealed " `those intimate associations, objects or activities otherwise imperceptible to police or fellow citizens.' " Id., at 215, n. 3 (quoting brief of the State of California). We think the Court's focus in this second-hand dictum was not upon intimacy but upon otherwise-imperceptibility, which is precisely the principle we vindicate today.
Thus, for example, we have found consistent with the Fourth Amendment, even absent a warrant, the search and seizure of garbage left for collection outside the curtilage of a home, California v. Greenwood,486 U. S. 35 (1988); the aerial surveillance of a fenced-in backyard from an altitude of 1,000 feet, California v. Ciraolo,476 U. S. 207 (1986); the aerial observation of a partially exposed interior of a residential greenhouse from 400 feet above, Florida v. Riley,488 U. S. 445 (1989); the aerial photography of an industrial complex from several thousand feet above, Dow Chemical Co. v. United States,476 U. S. 227 (1986); and the observation of smoke emanating from chimney stacks, Air Pollution Variance Bd. of Colo. v. Western Alfalfa Corp.,416 U. S. 861 (1974).
The use of the latter device would be constitutional given Smith v. Maryland,442 U. S. 735, 741 (1979), which upheld the use of pen registers to record numbers dialed on a phone because, unlike "the listening device employed in Katz ... pen registers do not acquire the contents of communications."

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