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Doppler Radar Used By Police To Determine Home Occupancy
schwit1 sends an article by Orin Kerr about a court case where a judge has had to weigh Fourth Amendment protections against law enforcement's ability to use a Doppler radar device to tell whether people are present within a home. Kerr writes:
If the government has the burden of proving reasonable suspicion, should the court treat the absence of information in the record on this point as not changing its otherwise-reached view that there is reasonable suspicion (as it does), or should that be treated as a potentially serious deficiency in getting to reasonable suspicion that the government has to overcome?
I’m not sure of the answer. We don’t normally encounter this question because we normally understand the uses and limits of investigatory tools. If the officer looked through the window and didn’t see any other people, for example, we could intuitively factor that into the reasonable suspicion inquiry without having to think about burdens of proof. I’m less sure what we’re supposed to do when the government use a suspicion-testing technological device with unknown capabilities."
The judge in the court case wrote, "New technologies bring with them not only new opportunities for law enforcement to catch criminals but also new risks for abuse and new ways to invade constitutional rights (PDF). ... Unlawful searches can give rise not only to civil claims but may require the suppression of evidence in criminal proceedings. We have little doubt that the radar device deployed here will soon generate many questions for this court and others along both of these axes."
Its mostly personal with a chance of privacy in my house.
Radar is based on radiation. This, if there are people in the house, would give them cancer. Go back to infrared.
If the government has the burden of proving reasonable suspicion, should the court treat the absence of information in the record on this point as not changing its otherwise-reached view that there is reasonable suspicion (as it does), or should that be treated as a potentially serious deficiency in getting to reasonable suspicion that the government has to overcome? I’m not sure of the answer.
He's doing better than me then. I'm not sure of the question.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Just need to know if that baby crib is occupied or not. No sense dropping a flashbang into an empty room.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Fuck the police
This technology is here now and is similar to the earlier use of thermal imaging cameras, except it works better. If radars can detect breathing of people trapped in rubble, then they can certainly detect breathing of someone on the other side of a door, or in a house across the street.
I think what the judge is getting at here is whether that is a "search" in the 4th amendment sense. Is the probable cause standard for "a specific person" or "anyone". In the cited case, they were looking for a fugitive, in a house associated with the fugitive (e.g. the bad guy had paid for electrical service) at a time when the guy was expected to be there. That stuff alone is enough to provide probable cause.
But they also used the radar from outside. And that's what the judge wasn't sure about.
I still don't see how exactly this was technically done? I realize Slashdot has been taken over by political arguments these days, but how do you effectively determine occupancy from a radar system again?
From that crappy summary it's practically impossible to tell what's going on. Why does the police need to know who is in a house anyway? What crime are we talking about? Being in a house? Not being in a house? I really don't get it.
Nest-type thermostats, entertainment streaming, alarm systems, and the beat (down) that is voluntary surrender of privacy goes on.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
What he said was that the police had enough grounds to believe the person was at home to enter. So _if_ evidence by the use of the Doppler radar was unlawful, it didn't matter, because the police had enough evidence without that.
Interestingly, the police searched the home because they believed there might be other people and weapons present (they did find weapons), while the doppler radar only spotted one person. Here the judge decided that as far as he knew, the doppler radar was not enough evidence that there only was one person. If the doppler radar worked better, then the police could _know_ that there is one and only one person, and wouldn't be allowed to do a search in case there is someone else dangerous in the house, but that wasn't the case.
Progress is expanding to meet the needs of expanding Progress.
If you're not Loyal to the Group of 17, and conforming to Correct Thought, then your disharmony will be modified with an eye toward perfecting it.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
...if it saves just ONE policeman's life!
how expensive is this gadget? does it really work in the field like it does in the lab? is it practical?
the only real application i see for it is that it allows cops to know how many (apparently gun-toting, meth crazed) baddies are hiding in the house ready to shoot-it-out with them?
not really an everyday thing.
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
Were never that arrogant to assume the constitution would not need to evolve as times changed. Current day Americans treat it like the bible - untouchable and infallible. This attitude will see you justifying all sorts of bad decisions.
This is not a plain senses device. Therefore a warrant is required.
It seems pretty cut and dried to me.
These issues came up 13 years ago in Kyllo v. United States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K... . In that case, use of FLIR to read heat signatures inside a home were deemed to be a search under the 4th amendment. Why the use of Doppler radar would be any different is beyond me. Perhaps the court needs to expressly rule that the use of technology to gain information about what is going on inside someone's home constitutes a search and requires a warrant. It seems obvious to me that this is a breach of everyone's constitutional rights.
I would think that the cops would not be there with the equipment in the first place, if there was not reasonable suspicion.
I personally would damn well want to sue/arrest my neighbor if I found out he was using doppler radar to check if I was home.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Ignorance of the law is an excuse.
http://thinkprogress.org/justi...
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
No, he's just an idiot who craves attention of any kind, and - well done! - you've gone and given it to him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Ultra-wideband is also used in "see-through-the-wall" precision radar-imaging technology,[10][11][12] precision locating and tracking (using distance measurements between radios), and precision time-of-arrival-based localization approaches.[13] It is efficient, with a spatial capacity of approximately 1013 bit/s/m.[citation needed] UWB radar has been proposed as the active sensor component in an Automatic Target Recognition application, designed to detect humans or objects that have fallen onto subway tracks.[14]
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Agreed. He is clearly an attention-seeking idiot. Who also happens to be a race-baiting Liberal.
Cops used to peek into houses with thermal imaging until the courts told them they needed a warrant for that. This doesn't seem any different other than it radiates.
For an institution sworn to uphold the law they sure do bend it a lot when it's convenient for them.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Try reading the gorram linked references!
In that case the Court qualified the scope to just technology that is not in use by the common non-LEO person.
There is still an element of subjectivity, e.g. at what point could it be said that cellphone use by the common person, but it makes it crystal clear that evidence from a Doppler device cannot be used without a prior warrant.
This is nothing new. Just because a new technologies exist does not mean we need to redefine our rights to explicitly deal with it.
Peaking in the windows of a home, using a drug dog to sniff around a house, using thermal imaging to inspect the contents of a home, using radar/x-ray vision/telekinetics/etc. to search inside of a home are ALL considered searches and should all require probable cause and a search warrant under the 4th Amendment.
[A]n individual may not legitimately demand privacy for activities conducted out of doors in fields, except in the area immediately surrounding the home...The [Fourth] Amendment reflects the recognition of the Framers that certain enclaves should be free from arbitrary government interference. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O...
Homeowners possess a privacy interest that extends inside their homes and in the curtilage immediately surrounding the outside of their homes, but not in the "open fields" and "wooded areas" extending beyond the curtilage (see Hester v. United States, 265 U.S. 57 [1924]). - http://criminal.findlaw.com/cr...
Florida v. Jardines, 569 U.S. ___ (2013), is a decision by the United States Supreme Court which held that police use of a trained detection dog to sniff for narcotics on the front porch of a private home is a "search" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, and therefore, without consent, requires both probable cause and a search warrant. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001), held that the use of a thermal imaging, or FLIR, device from a public vantage point to monitor the radiation of heat from a person's home was a "search" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, and thus required a warrant. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K...
Typical radiated power for through the wall radar is 10 milliwatts, and usually around 1 mW. That's apparently enough to penetrate 30 feet of concrete and rebar rubble
http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/09/26/nasas-new-heartbeat-sensor-could-save-lives/
A back of the envelope says you got more exposure from your WiFi when you entered your comment than you'd get from these things.
The operator of the radar will get a lot more cumulative exposure than the persons being watched, and I would imagine that the manufacturer would have thought about that.
I guess you really didn't read the OET Bulletin 65 you said you were handed as an Amateur Radio Licensee.
Doppler radar is continuous wave at low power (milliwatts), as is readily ascertained by looking it up, on Wikipedia, even. Or, by looking up the FCC registration. It's commonly used in those Part 15 automatic door opening thingies at 10 GHz (X-band) or 24 GHz (K-band); police speed radar uses the same bands; as do microwave/radar motion detectors for burglar alarms.
The safety of a CW signal is probably the *most studied* of any RF exposure: it's easiest. It's things like pulsed radar where there are observed athermal effects (e.g. audible clicks from high power pulses) that are less well understood.
There's no recognized mechanism for non-ionizing radiation to cause cancer, aside from thermal effects (heating), and that heating is what the limits (e.g. 10 mW/sq cm for low microwave frequencies) are based on.
humans have different heart rates and breathing rates from dogs and cats. Small babies and big dogs, though...
"And to address a following point that may get raised; electric meters are sometimes used as evidence of what is happening inside a house. I think that also violates the intent of the 4th."
In actuality, they don't do it that way for constitutional reasons and for safety of electrical workers. The power company (in California, anyway) does not tell law enforcement about abnormally high electricity consumption, because PG&E and SCE don't want bad guys with guns (in general) thinking that utility workers (in general) are on the "other side". There are also plenty of constitutional restrictions against "dragnet" type sweeps (e.g. getting all utility data for a given area).
What they do is develop probable cause (e.g. neighbor complaints about the smell of the grow operation), do a regular old street surveillance operation (e.g. appearance of house is inconsistent with number of people coming and going, and not simply accounted for by "they're on vacation and their lights are on timers) to develop more probable cause.
But that would only get you a "knock and ask" warrant, and if the person wasn't in the house, or hid, then they'd have to go back later.
Then, they go to the utility and ask them for *specific data* for that house. Then, since grow ops consume a lot of power, they often bypass the meter (felony theft of service), which the utility really cares a lot about. With modern meters, they can turn the meter off for a half cycle, and if there's voltage on the load side of the switch, and the house doesn't have solar panels (with a plausible broken anti-backfeed), they NOW have real good probable cause to enter the house for
a) theft of service
b) potential hazard to utility workers (backfeeding of power)
So now it's easy to get a no-knock warrant for entry.
Once they're inside, Oh my... look at that, a grow operation. And though it is not what they entered for, it is not "fruit of the poisoned tree" because they have already got probable cause from their surveillance. They essentially serve two warrants at once.
Kyllo was actually broader than this situation: it was about detecting the heat from a grow operation, not from the people, so it was substantially "less invasive" than a through the wall imager or detector.
Under the Kyllo standard, through the wall radar would clearly require a warrant.
But here, the question is more like a search for weapons incident to an arrest. (e.g. a Terry stop)
Essentially, it's all about the power and proximity that determines the danger. First level of danger is being blinded or having your testicles ruined with non-ionizing radiation. Microwaves can blind you, so I assume radar can also since it's in some of the same RF bands. It's all about power and proximity, again.
The human eyeball has the right size and structure to be resonant with a number of RF frequencies, which leads to the blinding danger I mentioned. Similar size and relative shape of the testicles makes them similarly vulnerable. These parts are endangered first by the molecular-vibration increase that can lead to burns, but blindness and sterility can occur sooner than the pain of burning can be felt.
First thing to do is never stand close in front of a microwave transmitter dish, or a radar gun. They are definitely dangerous.
As for the danger of cancer from those varied non-ionizing radiation sources, it's not certain, but I won't be taking any chances knowing the other proven effects.
There is already a SCOTUS ruling on this issue: Kyllo v. United States (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyllo_v._United_States)
In this case, the police used FLIR (Forward Looking Infra Red) cameras equipped on a police helicopter to look at the heat signatures through the walls of a house.
The courts ruled (5-4) that doing such is a defacto search of the property and a clear 4th amendment violation.
The point of the ruling, is not the intrusiveness or the technical means by which the police overcome the privacy and property rights, but the fact that doing so is a search of the property.
Justice Scalia, who wrote the presiding opinion, further went on to protect against all future attempts at bypassing the barriers of privacy and conduct searches of property without a warrant by the way he wrote his opinion. Again, it is not the technological means by which one overcomes the property's barriers to privacy, regardless how non-intrusive or passive such measures are, but the fact hat doing such is conducting a search of the property.
Quote from Wikipedia: "Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001), held that the use of a thermal imaging, or FLIR, device from a public vantage point to monitor the radiation of heat from a person's home was a "search" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, and thus required a warrant."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K...
Is this intended to use imaging that is NOT thermal imaging so that a warrant is not required? Someone clear this up for me
For those grinding google for more information, here is a russian site that has some interesting info... http://www.rslab.ru/english/project/brl/
I think your assumptions about him based on 7 words of essentially random gibberings says far more about you than him.
You mean IR radiation? That stuff with even higher energy than radar?
We have a severe case of "der Faderland" going on here. It's not going away until people 1.) Recognize the problem. 2.) Grow a spine 3.) Realize that nobody willingly GIVES away power they already have.
Good luck. A little education would go a long way too.
...to put in/on my walls to block this bullshit?
Proper insulation will shut down infrared/thermal imaging, but this is a different beast. RADAR is EM emissions so I'm envisioning having to somehow turn my house into a faraday cage just to keep these nosey walking pieces of shit from illegally checking it out every day to see how many of us are in here. That will complicate things.