MassPrivateIJust because a person can see the outside of your home on a public street doesn’t mean you’ve surrendered all your privacy expectations in the home. However, that seemingly obvious concept is being put to the test in a federal criminal case in Washington state, which involves the constitutionality of using a camera mounted on a pole outside a house to allow the police to watch the home for almost a month. Senior District Court Judge Edward Shea invited EFF to submit an amicus brief in the case and Monday we filed our brief, arguing prolonged warrantless video surveillance violates the Fourth Amendment.
In United States v. Vargas, local police in Franklin County, Washington suspected Leonel Vargas of drug trafficking and in April 2013, installed a pole camera on a public road overlooking Vargas’ rural home. They did not get a search warrant to install or use the camera, which was pointed squarely at the front door and driveway of the home. Officers had the ability to pan the camera around and zoom in and out all from the comfort of the police station. They watched the outside of Vargas’ home for more than a month, taking notice of who visited him and what cars they were driving. They observed no criminal activity until a month after they began snooping, when officers saw him shooting a gun at beer bottles in what appeared to be target practice. Because the officer had learned earlier that Vargas was undocumented, they had probable cause to believe he had committed a federal crime by possessing a firearm. They used this surveillance to get a search warrant to enter Vargas’ home, and the search turned up drugs and guns, which form the criminal charges against Vargas.
Vargas moved to suppress the video surveillance, arguing the use of the pole camera violated the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches. Since the frontyard and door of Vargas’ home is considered “curtilage,” it is entitled to the same Fourth Amendment protection as the home, where warrantless searches are considered per se unreasonable.
In defending the surveillance, the government argued that Vargas had no expectation of privacy since he exposed the front of his house to the public. But no one expects their house to be placed under invasive 24/7 video surveillance for a month. Although the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1980s previously authorized warrantless aerial surveillance in California v. Ciraolo, Dow Chemical Co. v. United Statesand Florida v. Riley, all of those cases involved one-time fly-overs, not continuous surveillance. Like GPS and cell phone tracking, prolonged video surveillance of a person’s home raises much more significant Fourth Amendment problems than a one-time observation. Non-stop video surveillance — especially of a person’s home — allows the police to determine a person’s associations and patterns of movements, information that can be extremely revealing.
The invasiveness of video surveillance has led courts to require the police to do more than just get a search warrant to engage in this kind of snooping. Law enforcement must make additional showings to the court — similar to those necessary to obtain authorization to wiretap a phone call — before engaging in covert video surveillance. Any other rule would allow the police free rein to silently watch and record those they dislike, waiting for someone to inevitably commit one of the myriad federal crimes. Since the police had no warrant or judicial authorization whatsoever to video record Vargas’ home for a month, the surveillance violated the Fourth Amendment and all the evidence the police seized as a result of the surveillance can’t be used against Vargas in his criminal case.
These arguments touch upon more than pole cameras. As police departments around the country get their hands on new technologies like drones and mesh networks, the ability to move around anonymously and privately will be significantly impaired. It’s crucial for courts to play a role in policing the police and their new toys by overseeing the use of these technologies.
Police are using Predator drones to spy on Americans in their backyards:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2072869/Local-cops-using-Predator-drones-spy-Americans-backyards.html
U.S. govt.is secretly spying on EVERYONE using civilian security cameras:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2187602/U-S-Government-secretly-spying-using-civilian-security-cameras-say-Wikileaks.html
DOJ asks court to give police the benefit of the doubt on murky surveillance law:
The Dept. of Justice (DOJ) filed a petition to the Third Circuit arguing that, while it doesn’t challenge the court’s opinion on the constitutionality of the GPS tracking, the officers who placed the tracker on Katzin’s car did so in good faith, believing that what they were doing was legal. The DOJ therefore wants the Third Circuit to allow the evidence against Katzin to be used in trial. The court’s opinion on this question is critically important, especially given how rapidly surveillance technologies develop as opposed to how slowly the law changes around digital privacy.
The DOJ is basically saying, “Ok, we won’t appeal the substance of your ruling — this warrantless GPS tracking violated the Fourth Amendment. But how could the police officers have known this at the time? We believe they acted in good faith, and therefore the GPS evidence against Katzin, even though we now know it was obtained illegally, should still be viable in court to use against him.”
If the court disagrees with the government on the ‘Good Faith Exception’ issue here, it will send a strong message to both police departments and legislatures. To police, it would say that pushing the limits of the Fourth Amendment to its absolute extremes won’t work — and that getting a warrant for most surveillance is the safest bet, if they want to use evidence in court. To legislatures, such an opinion would make clear that they need to put the pedal to the metal with respect to passing comprehensive digital privacy legislation. It’s important that police have the power they need to investigate serious crimes, and they shouldn’t be confused about the state of the law.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/189271187/Petition-en-Banc
Surveillance and it’s intrusion on privacy report:
http://www.aclumich.org/sites/default/files/Eyes%20in%20the%20Sky.pdf
Corporate espionage against nonprofit organizations report:
http://www.corporatepolicy.org/spookybusiness.pdf
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http://massprivatei.blogspot.com/2013/12/video-surveillance-of-home-for-month_5.html
Wait a minute. Didn’t this article state that the guy was “undocumented” … a.k.a. an Illegal alien? So why didn’t they just deport the dude? WTF is wrong with this government?
They like to play with all their new toys bought on the taxpayer’s doll. man-tell you what……if i EVER see something like that outside my domicile, i am gonna go get me a babe Ruth slugger and practice my home-run swing on it. i invite everyone else to do the same if they see this. molon-labe.
“Because the officer had learned earlier that Vargas was undocumented, they had probable cause to believe he had committed a federal crime by possessing a firearm. They used this surveillance to get a search warrant to enter Vargas’ home, and the search turned up drugs and guns, which form the criminal charges against Vargas.”
So was he an undocumented national or undocumented in not having the paperwork/registered forms to possess a firearm?
1. If he was an undocumented national, yes, why wait? Deport his ass and stop being a peeping tom.
2. If he did not have his documents to possess a firearm, then I say SCREW YOU! It’s called the 2nd Article to the Bill of Rights and if you are going to charge this person for possessing a firearm, it’s unconstitutional.
3. Finally and most importantly, having a camera pointing at a house is strictly forbidden under the 4th Article to the Bill of Rights because you are stalking, and searching someone’s possessions, personal property and articles without probable cause or a warrant and yes, a house is considered to be someone’s PERSONAL property, so therefore, the entire police department should be shut down and hanged and the camera itself should be beaten to a pulp with a Louisville Slugger bat. That being said, number 1 and 2 don’t even need to be questioned.