Cite as: 533 U. S. 27 (2001)
Stevens, J., dissenting
Notwithstanding the implications of today's decision, there is a strong public interest in avoiding constitutional litigation over the monitoring of emissions from homes, and over the inferences drawn from such monitoring. Just as "the police cannot reasonably be expected to avert their eyes from evidence of criminal activity that could have been observed by any member of the public," Greenwood, 486 U. S., at 41, so too public officials should not have to avert their senses or their equipment from detecting emissions in the public domain such as excessive heat, traces of smoke, suspicious odors, odorless gases, airborne particulates, or radioactive emissions, any of which could identify hazards to the community. In my judgment, monitoring such emissions with "sense-enhancing technology," ante, at 34, and drawing useful conclusions from such monitoring, is an entirely reasonable public service.
On the other hand, the countervailing privacy interest is at best trivial. After all, homes generally are insulated to keep heat in, rather than to prevent the detection of heat going out, and it does not seem to me that society will suffer from a rule requiring the rare homeowner who both intends to engage in uncommon activities that produce extraordinary amounts of heat, and wishes to conceal that production from outsiders, to make sure that the surrounding area is well insulated. Cf. United States v. Jacobsen, 466 U. S. 109, 122 (1984) ("The concept of an interest in privacy that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable is, by its very nature, critically different from the mere expectation, however well
(1984), to refute a point we do not make underscores the fact that the Court has no real answer (either in logic or in law) to the point we do make. Of course, Karo itself does not provide any support for the Court's view that inferences can amount to unconstitutional searches. The illegality in that case was "the monitoring of a beeper in a private residence" to obtain information that "could not have [been] obtained by observation from outside," id., at 714-715, rather than any thought processes that flowed from such monitoring.
45
Page: Index Previous 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007