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Article: What were they smoking?: the Supreme Court's latest step in a long, strange trip through the Fourth Amendment.(Supreme Court Review)
- Article from:
- Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology
- Article date:
- September 22, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Northwestern University, School of Law. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001).
I. INTRODUCTION
In Kyllo v. United States, (1) the United States Supreme Court addressed whether the use of a thermal imager, which detects the patterns of heat escaping from a house, constitutes a search and requires a warrant under the Fourth Amendment. (2) The Court held that "[w]here, as here, the Government uses a device that is not in general public use, to explore details of the home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion, the surveillance is a 'search' and is presumptively unreasonable without a warrant." (3) The Court based its holding on its belief that the technology ...