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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.
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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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