Law.com: Roberts Is Uneasy About Invasive Police Devices, Gorsuch Has His Back

Law.com: Roberts Is Uneasy About Invasive Police Devices, Gorsuch Has His Back by Marsha Coyle:

Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. on Wednesday in New Zealand voiced concerns about the privacy implications of new technology that allows police to “see through walls,” echoing the alarm his newest colleague, Justice Neil Gorsuch, first raised nearly three years ago.

“There are devices now that can allow law enforcement to see through walls. Heat imaging and all this kind of thing,” Roberts reportedly said at the event in New Zealand. “Well, what does that do to a body of law that’s developed from common law days in England about when you can search a house?”

In a December 2014 decision, then-Judge Gorsuch of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit led a three-judge panel in a Fourth Amendment case that confronted—but did not finally resolve—the privacy implications of a device that let the authorities essentially look inside private homes from the outside. In that case, the appeals court examined Doppler radar technology that is capable of detecting the presence of “human breathing and movement within” a house. The case was resolved on other grounds.

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