E.D. Wis.: Video surveillance of house from across street was not unconstitutional

Video surveillance of defendant’s premises from a telephone pole across the street did not implicate any Fourth Amendment interest. United States v. Urbina, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 96345 (E.D. Wis. November 6, 2007). Noting that this was an issue of first impression in the Seventh Circuit, after surveying numerous cases, the court finds no Fourth Amendment interest involved here.

There are many legitimate reasons for this court and the general public to be concerned about indiscriminate law enforcement video surveillance, particularly if it is aimed at private homes. Turning to the specific facts of this case, those valid privacy concerns are not implicated. The court finds that the fact that law enforcement chose to install a surveillance camera, as opposed to utilizing more traditional surveillance techniques, does not change the result from a Fourth Amendment perspective. Unlike the surveillance in Cuevas-Sanchez, the agents in the present case were not surveilling anything that was not otherwise visible using traditional street-level surveillance techniques. Here, the camera which was installed on a utility pole, was unable to view any area where a person may have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Certainly, video cameras installed upon utility poles have the potential to invade a person’s reasonable expectation of privacy, as the facts in Cuevas-Sanchez demonstrate, but that was not the situation in the present case. The video camera captured nothing more than persons coming and going from the defendant’s residence who were otherwise exposed to public view. As such, Brijido Aguilera had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the end of his driveway, and thus the Fourth Amendment was not implicated by the agents’ surveillance. Therefore, the court shall recommend that Brijido Aguilera’s motion to suppress, (Docket No. 278), be denied.