By: dmc-admin//June 18, 2001//
“[I]n the case of the search of the interior of homes – 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. We think that obtaining by sense-enhancing technology any information regarding the interior of the home that could not otherwise have been obtained without physical ‘intrusion into a constitutionally protected area,’ Silverman, 365 U.S., at 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. On the basis of this criterion, the information obtained by the thermal imager in this case was the product of a search.”
Reversed and remanded.
Local Effect:
The decision reverses governing law in both federal and state courts in Wisconsin: State v. McKee, 181 Wis.2d 354, 510 N.W.2d 807 (Ct.App.1993); U.S. v. Myers, 46 F.3d 668 (7th Cir.1995).