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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.
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.
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.
Radar is non ionizing. It could cook people, though, if it has enough power.
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.
You knock on the door to search the place. Those inside stay quiet and refuse to admit their presence. The frequency of the dopple radar is such that it penetrates the walls and is reflected by the salt water bags(people) keeping quiet - but their hearts beat and they breathe. Motions of chest walls create a detectable shift in frequency = people present, but refusing to answer the door = allowed to force entry to execute the search warrant.
Radar is non ionizing. It could cook people, though, if it has enough power.
Actually, yes it can lead to cancer: http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-ce...
When you get your Armature radio license they hand you a sheet with warnings and exposure levels. Non-ionizing isn't nearly as bad as Ionizing radiation where even very low levels are dangerous. You need much higher energy levels of non-ionizing before it becomes dangerous. The 1 watt you find in most wifi devices is far far bellow what would be considered dangerous. I have a 70 watt 2 meter radio and even that's safe.
A wall penetrating Doppler radar device though? I would be concerned if that were pointed at me for anything more than a split second. It was deffinately not designed to be pointed at sleeping children. You'd really need to know exactly how it works though. The danger with non-ionizing radiation is not strait forward. It's not like you can just say "1hr of exposure to 1000watts is where it becomes dangerous!" It changes depending on the Frequency, duration, power and distance from the antenna. So it's really hard to say. I would think the FCC might be interested in talking to this police station.
You're absolutely right, that's why they added the ability to change it. It's been done several times. There's a fairly huge difference, however, between following the process to change it, and changing how you interpret what it says. That's how you end up with torture being OK, killing American citizens without due process being OK, arbitrary suspension of habeus corpus being OK, attacking other countries at the whim of the president being OK...
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
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 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."
There's a fairly huge difference, however, between following the process to change it, and changing how you interpret what it says.
Apparently it wasn't to the founders. I suggest you re-read some of the rulings of the John Jay Supreme Court. John Jay being a founder and all.
That's how you end up with torture being OK, killing American citizens without due process being OK, arbitrary suspension of habeus corpus being OK, attacking other countries at the whim of the president being OK...
Never learned about the Alien and Sedition Acts, eh? That was passed during an undeclared naval war on France. It also allowed the imprisonment and deportation of people considered "dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States" and suppression of free speech by the government. You aren't actually naive enough to really think the people who wrote the Patriot Act were the first ones to invent that whole "enemy combatant" thing, did you? A group of "The Founders" were doing that 200 years before it.
You knock on the door to search the place. Those inside stay quiet and refuse to admit their presence. The frequency of the dopple radar is such that it penetrates the walls and is reflected by the salt water bags(people) keeping quiet - but their hearts beat and they breathe. Motions of chest walls create a detectable shift in frequency = people present, but refusing to answer the door = allowed to force entry to execute the search warrant.
It is a problem if the police makes this assumption.
The radar can't tell the difference between a person or a pet. Should a cat or a reasonably well trained dog be the difference between the cops breaking down the door or not?
In the end I suspect it is going to end up to be another tool for saying "Well, the radar indicated people but no-one opened. Clearly something was wrong so we broke into the house. Turned out it was just a radar malfunction, but we dropped/found this while we were snooping around."
So long as the radar isn't being used to justify the reasonable suspicion the suspect is present needed to enter the home to serve an arrest warrant, which would constitute a search in and of itself, I don't see the problem. And note, this is only talking about using this as a tool to serve arrest warrants. They're not suggesting driving down the street and randomly scanning everybody's home. That's already out by...I can't remember the case name. The one with the infrared cameras on helicopters to find grow operations. But as a precautionary measure to help assess the number and location of occupants to a home they already have a valid warrant to search? That's fine. Makes things safer for everyone involved.
To have a valid warrant, the state needs probable cause to believe the things or persons for which they are searching are in the home. For a search warrant, a sworn witness who will say "I saw Connie_Lingus carrying the stolen TVs into the garage." For an arrest warrant, an officer staking out the home who can swear "I saw him enter the premises." But once they've got that, they're going to enter anyway.
Today, because they're scared of the gun-toting, meth crazed baddies ready to shoot it out with them, they bust down your door with overwhelming force and throw a flash bang in your baby's crib. But if they use the radar to scan the house first and see there's only one guy home sleeping in the back bedroom (plus the baby in the front), maybe they won't be so grenade-happy. Certainly it would help outrage people more (and they should already be outraged. Why they're not I don't know) to hear, "wait, they threw the grenade in the room even though they already knew there was nothing in there but a sleeping baby because of the radar?! Outrageous!"
But the really interesting question is, "does the use of the radar override the reasonable suspicion of danger which authorizes a defensive sweep of the house?" Really, the judge was asking if this should limit the search powers of the police. Right now when the police enter your home to serve a warrant they need to perform a quick sweep to make sure there isn't somebody else hiding in the back room with a gun. That's a reasonable suspicion of danger, so the police quickly scan through the house. They're not allowed to go tossing your sock drawer (unless their warrant authorizes them to toss your sock drawer) because there's little chance a baddie is hiding there. Unless he's very, very tiny...
Thing is, if during the defensive sweep, they spot evidence of a crime in one of the back rooms, they can seize that, even if it has nothing to do with the crime they're investigating. This is reasonable. They're authorized to be there, and it's in obvious sight in the room (plain view from the first few feet in the doorway. Not the sock drawer). Think bloody knife on the bed, the bodies of the toddlers you've been murdering...or your bag of weed on your night stand.
Question is, if the radar eliminates the reasonable suspicion there's somebody else hiding in the house, then performing the defensive sweep in addition to the radar sweep would be unreasonable, and so the toddler corpses would be inadmissible. And what the judge is saying is the radar isn't good enough to dispel that reasonable suspicion. Maybe one day it will be, but not yet.
It still is a better situation. If the cops are going to enter the home anyway, the more forewarning they have about the location and numbers of occupants the less likely (and certainly less justifiable) excessive use of force will be.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
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."
There has been one published paper showing a possible link between non-ionizing radiation and cancer. That doesn't mean there is a link.
No, get your facts strait. There has been 1 study that has shown that the relatively low levels of RF in a cellphones might be linked to cancer. Which is worth further study. But strong RF sources (i.e. far stronger than a Cellphone) are well known to be harmful to human health in many ways. Mainly they heat tissues in a very abnormal way that the human body is not able to cope with. Repetitive damage to cells is known to be carcinogenic. There's not been conclusive evidence that it's a direct carcinogen but there's plenty of anecdotal evidence. It's something that just hasn't been studied all that much because at the levels required to produce the effect the RF energy is already very dangerous and the FCC has strict limits on it anyway.
I remember the Mythbusters where they "Busted" the myth that you could cook a turkey in front of a radar dish. My father laughed his butt off at this. He was in the airforce in the 1970s as a radar tech and at one point was stationed in Alaska working on the BMEWS systems which had ranges in excess of 2000 miles. They put out Megawatts of power. One of the common problems he'd run into would be dead birds stuck in various parts of the radar dishes. They wouldn't just cook... they'd burst into flames.
Here's one of them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...
Go stand in front of that and tell me non-ionizing radiation in safe and doesn't cause cancer.
I've no idea what the police are using. I've no idea if it's safe... and neither do the police. Doplar radar has not been studied for safety when being pointed at a house, I can guarantee you that. They should not be doing this.
something tells me that the cops using this don't care. In fact, I'll bet they firmly believe "the perps deserve it", and anyone else in the house is guilty by association. If they get fried, then that's just one less bullet they have to waste. And trying to explain the differences between radiation, wattage, etc would probably just make them confused, then angry, then really sarcastic...eventually drawing you into some perceived conflict that they can escalate to a physical fight so they can arrest you. I wish I was being sarcastic, but I've seen this on COPS so many times across the nation I sometimes think there must be some manual somewhere on just how to manipulate people into fighting you marked "LAW ENFORCEMENT EYES ONLY". Only in the past month or so have I seen any attempts from the police at de-escualtion. My friends ask me why I watch that show...so I can learn how not to get maced?
As more topical to your post, would it also be affected by building materials? I don't know what power / frequency such radar would be running at, but YES I'm sure the FCC would. This is almost a guaranteed violation of whatever agreement his department has with the FCC to be able to use this...although the geek in me thinks it's a cool off-label usage like on Total Recall or Commando (Commando claimed to use X rays though lol) but 1) potentially dangerous 2) against an unconvicted civilian(s) 3) crossing the line of an expectation of privacy since we have little easy protection.
It's not something you can "opt out of". If you don't want to run the risk of having someone use your cell to spy on you, we can choose not to carry one with us. If we don't want people looking through the windows we can close the blinds. I suppose some type of Faraday cage or wall coverings would work, but that's just diving straight into paranoid conspiracy land. Trying to explain to any guests, family, etc why suddenly no EM signal works in your place is almost guaranteed to make everyone think you need some therapy LOL. In my ideal USA, even if this technique was 100% safe it should STILL be illegal.
For a legal precedence, this seems to line up with the police using thermal imaging (cancerous radiation too). How legal / common is it for LE to do night raids after thermaling a house to get the positions of targets? That stuff used to be "military grade" but with the massive federal "one cop, one tank" policy this should be filter out by now.
"Armature radio license"?
It allows you to use one of those wind-up radios that they make for camping and emergencies. I have a Level II Armature Radio License, which allows me to use the built-in flashlight in addition to the radio itself.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
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
Right, that's true. At the time the radar guns were "Always on" you'd just point them at something and the display would display a number. When there were no cars the cops would lay them in their laps and not turn them off. Several developed tumors on their legs. Many of them sued but None of them won their cases (that I know of) due to lack of evidence. But since then they've changed radar speed detectors to only be on momentarily.
And this is the difficulty with this issue... The number of people with a need to be using strong RF sources on a daily basis are very few, and it's something that's hard to study. And the solution to avoiding exposure is very simple in most cases. In the case of the police, leaving the radar on was giving away their position to radar detectors... In the case of powerful radar, it's dangerous in its own right so they power it down before working on it. In the case of cellphones and other consumer devices, having high wattage transmitters creates all sorts of interference and band leakage problems so there are plenty of reasons to want to limit RF power that don't include cancer.
There are lots of reasons to limit RF power before you get to levels where you have to start worrying about cancer. Pointing Doppler radar at a residential house though? That's just stupid. That's not been proven safe, so we should assume that it's not.
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.
"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.