Since the outside of your house is public, the government may video-record your house sans search warrant. “Law enforcement in Kansas recorded the front of a man’s home for 68 days straight, 15 hours a day, and obtained evidence to prove him guilty on 16 charges,” according to Jalopnik:
“Mr. Hay had no reasonable expectation of privacy in a view of the front of his house,” said the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in its decision on U.S. vs Hay. “As video cameras proliferate throughout society, regrettably, the reasonable expectation of privacy from filming is diminished.”
Maxwell Zeff, “Feds Can Film Your Front Porch for 68 Days Without a Warrant, Says Court,” Jalopnik (March 21, 2024).
Outside the jurisdiction of the Tenth Circuit, this ruling does not strictly apply. But it shows where courts are heading, no?
1 reply on “Porch, No Privacy”
The issue here is very interesting.
Had a officer casually and briefly looked at Mr Hays’ porch, and observed evidence of a crime, nearly all of us would regard that evidence as admissible without a prior warrant. A presumption that one will not be casually and briefly observed on one’s porch seems too much.
But a presumption that one will not be subjected to extensive observation on one’s porch is at least considerably more plausible, and a presumption that any extensive observation will be casual rather than intensive is considerably more plausible.
(We can imagine a successful civil suit against a party recording activity on one’s porch for fifteen hours each day over a course of sixty-eight days for private purposes.)
Of course, drawingly a line would be challenging, except at one extreme or another — allowing no observations without warrant or, like the Tenth Circuit Court, allowing all observations. So, yes, the Courts more generally will head in a direction of allowing all such observation by state officials.
Legislatures might choose to set some different standard, but voters would generally have to imagine themselves as victims of such surveillance. Few will sympathize with Mr Hays, because of the nature of his offense. Until this camel is well established in the tent, officials can simply refrain from exercising such power in cases to which voters might otherwise object.