Camera Spying Violated Fourth Amendment, Colorado Supreme Court Rules

forbes.com

26 points·brk··9 comments

The issue at hand (it seems) was the lack of a warrant. In 2012, the US Supreme Court ruled 9-0 in US v. Jones that a GPS tracker attached to a car was a “search” and would require a warrant. This seems like the same idea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Jones

This seems pretty open and shut. Drug dealer though he may be, we can't allow such a blatant invasion of privacy to set the standard. The dude had a 6 foot tall fence around his yard and the police think it's okay to put a camera up on a pole to surveil him without a warrant? And they did it around the clock for 3 months...

If I point a camera into my neighbor's yard and run it 24/7 for 3 months, I'm probably in deep doo-doo even if he has no fence at all. With a fence, I'd refer to Kyllo v. US, though that disturbingly was a 5-4 decision rather than 9-0 :(.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyllo_v._United_States

Doesn't this rub pretty strongly against Florida v. Riley, which ruled overhead surveillance is legal as long as the viewer was somewhere a person could've reasonably been?

Is standing on a pole for 3 months somewhere a person could have reasonably been?

Yeah, a stylite could reasonably have done it, obviously /s

Interesting if this gets to the SCOTUS. Is it "reasonable" for your neighbor to film your backyard with a drone?

I think this is a different case, though. The police didn’t succeed or didn’t try to get a warrant before pointing a camera at one guy. Then, tried to argue that they could mount it anywhere because his fence had gaps and was only 6’ high.

For 3 months, uninterrupted? Yeah, I don't think that's reasonable at all.

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