When Law Enforcement Fails to Respect Privacy, They Fail to Protect Society free essay sample

Technologies are used to advance our world and create a better standard of living. Often, these technologies are used to improve medicine, develop assistance with everyday tasks, or to create new access to communications throughout our world and space. Technologies have even given us a better insight to our past. Technologies drastically change our lives every day and every minute. These are the welcomed advances that change the roots to who we all are and what we will become. What happens though, when technologies begin to infringe on our human rights? Our civil liberties are created not as privileges, but as rights. Rights that are ours to have and we are all responsible to protect them. With technology broadly expanding what we are able to do, there are more and more tools available for both individuals and law enforcement. When individuals use these new technologies against one other, there are punishments if a line is crossed. Law enforcement also uses these new technologies that sometimes cross the line. New rules and regulations are constantly created and altered to fit into our ever changing technical universe. The article written by Thomas D. Colbridge, â€Å"Kyllo v. United States: Technology v. Individual Privacy†, is a prime example of a true case that questioned this fine line between what is allowed and what is really an infringement of civil liberties. It shows what happens when law enforcement fails to respect privacy, and because of that neglect, fails to protect society. Privacy and Protection 3 The case of, â€Å"Kyllo v. United States†, opens your eyes and forces the ultimate realization that our rights are being violated every day. Individuals as well as the law enforcement and government must respect our rights to privacy. When those rights are not respected, it will make the efforts to provide security fail. The Kyllo case proves what happens when law enforcement fails to respect those rights and ultimately fails to protect our society from criminals. â€Å"The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States prohibits unreasonable searches.† (Kennedy, 421) This amendment is what the Kyllo case is based on. A Fourth Amendment search is defined by two questions. Does a person expect their activity to remain private? Is that expectation of privacy reasonable and acceptable by society? A search is a Fourth Amendment search if these answers are, yes. A Fourth Amendment search may not be done unless it can be proven a reasonable search by means of a warrant, or an exception to the warrant requirement. If these conditions are not met, then the search may not be performed. A Fourth Amendment search was done to Danny Kyllo’s home and it was done without a warrant or one of the exceptions, and in the end, law enforcement failed to protect the streets from a manufacturer and supplier of marijuana. A National Guard member used a thermal imager to obtain a thermal scan of Kyllo’s home. He recorded this scan in the early morning and did so without a warrant. An agent of the Bureau of Land Management requested the scan because he suspected that Kyllo had a marijuana growing operation in the home. Kyllo’s ex-wife had been recently arrested for, â€Å"delivery and possession of a controlled substance†, and they were living together. (Kennedy, 422) Kyllo’s utility records were also subpoenaed and indicated a higher than usual utility consumption. A police informant also reported that Kyllo informed him that he could supply marijuana. The agent of the Bureau of Land Management didn’t obtain a warrant for the scan, but he used the results of the scan to obtain a warrant to do a Privacy and Protection 4 physical search of Kyllo’s home. That agent failed to respect Kyllo’s privacy by not obtaining a warrant permitting the thermal scan and thus invaded Kyllo’s civil liberties. When investigators used the search warrant to physically search Kyllo’s home, they found â€Å"marijuana plants, weapons, and drug paraphernalia.† (Kennedy, 422) They arrested Kyllo. Kyllo used the fact that the thermal scan was completed without a warrant to try to suppress the evidence against him. He said a Fourth Amendment search had been performed on his home without a warrant being obtained for the search. Since the results of the thermal scan had been used to obtain the search warrant, Kyllo simply argued that the search warrant was invalid, thus making the physical evidence obtained during the search invalid. The trial court unjustly denied Kyllo’s argument and convicted him. Kyllo appealed that conviction to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The Ninth Circuit had a problem making the final decision and had to hear the case three times before they reached a final verdict. Our ever changing technologies proved to be difficult to determine how our laws should be followed or amended. The first time they heard the case, they sent it back to trial court to obtain information of the capabilities of the thermal scan. They wanted to know how it worked and what details inside the home the scan could reveal. The trial court decided that the scan showed, â€Å"no intimate details of the life inside Kyllo’s home; did not invade any personal privacy inside the home; could not penetrate walls or windows to reveal human activities or conversations; and recorded only heat escaping from the house†. (Kennedy, 422) This decision again, wrongly struck down Kyllo’s argument that the thermal scan was a Fourth Amendment search. The Ninth Circuit rightly declared the thermal scan an unconstitutional search initially, but the third time it heard the case, it reversed the ruling and declared that it was not a Fourth Amendment search. The Ninth Circuit decided the scan didn’t reveal any intimate details and therefore was not a Privacy and Protection 5 Fourth Amendment search. Naturally, the circuit courts didn’t all agree on this issue, so Kyllo took his case before the U.S. Supreme court. The U.S. Supreme court was to decide on the, â€Å"constitutionality of residential thermal scans†. (Kennedy, 423) The U.S. Supreme court rightly decided that the thermal scan of Kyllo’s home was indeed a search under the Fourth Amendment. It was a close decision that was won 5 to 4. The ultimate decision was that the police were able to obtain information from the scan that they wouldn’t have been able to obtain without going inside Kyllo’s home. The U.S. Supreme court said that the thermal scan did in fact reveal details about the interior of Kyllo’s home, and was in fact a direct violation of Kyllo’s constitutional rights. The decision of the U.S. Supreme court was of course inevitable. The decision took a long time to make due to the different laws and constitutions already in place that were in direct confliction with newly advancing technology. When all of this information is looked at from a distance, it is easy to see what went wrong in this case. The agent of the Bureau of Land Management failed to respect Kyllo’s privacy and did not use the common sense of obtaining a warrant before ordering the thermal imaging scan. If the agent had been unsure of the need of the warrant, he should have obtained one to ensure his evidence acquired from the thermal scan was justified and admissible. In the process of invading Kyllo’s constitutional rights, the agent denied the community of their protection. He failed to rid the streets of a criminal that deserved to be imprisoned. He failed to do his job properly and in the process failed to protect society. Danny Kyllo was indeed growing and supplying marijuana. He deserved to get caught. He was breaking the law and hurting his community by growing and providing drugs to that community. Danny Kyllo also had rights though. First and foremost, he had the reasonable expectation of privacy inside his Privacy and Protection 6 home just as everyone else, including law enforcement officials, have. The fact that he may have been engaging in illegal activities, does not mean that he is automatically stripped of his constitutional rights. Even prisoners locked away in institutions have rights. The phrase, â€Å"innocent until proven guilty†, should be easy to understand and follow. The simple fact is that law enforcement officials, must respect and provide for a person’s privacy even when that person may not be obeying the law. Thermal imaging scans can still be done. The scans can be used if a warrant is obtained, if there is no expectation of privacy, or when the warrant is excused due to an exception. If someone is in imminent danger, no warrant would be needed. In the future, thermal imaging scans will more than likely not even be used for this purpose. When there is enough evidence to obtain a warrant for a thermal imaging scan, then there is probably enough evidence to obtain a search warrant of the home or business itself. The thermal scan is in essence, not needed. The agent of the Bureau of Land Management had a surplus of evidence, surely great enough to obtain a search warrant of the home without the evidence used from the thermal scan. The scan itself, could have provided false information due to there being a multitude of other reasons why areas of someone’s home would be warmer than others. Perhaps there was a tanning bed in a room of the home, or perhaps a license had been obtained to grow marijuana for medical reasons. There was only one thermal imaging scan completed on the home, just one. That scan could have ended up as an embarrassing situation for both the resident and the law enforcement officials. Government and law enforcement have to and must abide by the same basic guidelines that we are all held accountable for. Law enforcement officials are put into a position of power and a position of control to protect our societies from harm and injustices. That is the job these men and women choose to do. With that position of power and control, comes a great deal of responsibility. They are Privacy and Protection 7 responsible for keeping people safe and the streets clean of criminals and their illegal activities. They must first start though, by knowing the constitution and laws. They must start by knowing and following the rules of every day citizens. They must investigate, search, and report within the means and parameters of the laws that they are trying to protect. We trust the government and law enforcement officials and we trust them to protect us. When they fail to protect us by failing to do their job properly, they lose that trust. This problem can be easily remedied. Law enforcement officials should remember one thing; if law enforcement doesn’t respect privacy, they fail to protect our society. Privacy and Protection 8 References Kennedy, L. K., Kennedy, W. J. (2008). Writing in the Disciplines, Edition 6, pp. 420-429. Colbridge, Thomas. (2001). Kyllo v. United States: Technology v. Individual Privacy. FBI Law Enforcement Bulliton, pp. 25+.