Surveillance technologies developed to assist U.S. forces fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq are now being used by federal and local law enforcement, and the resulting tools — highly advanced radar motion detectors — provide authorities with the near capability of seeing inside homes,
USA Today reported.
The device, called the Range-R, is
manufactured by L-3 Communications, and sells for around $6,000 each. The company has sold about 200 of them.
The Range-R device can be placed against an outside wall to detect breathing inside from as far away as 50 feet. A more
advanced model displays three-dimensional data on where people inside a structure are located. Versions of the technology can also be adapted for drone use, according to USA Today.
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Some 50 law enforcement agencies, including the FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service, now deploy the Range-R, whose existence is only now coming to light.
The Supreme Court ruled as far back as 2001 that police normally need a search warrant before they may draw upon thermal cameras and advanced radar sensors to reveal what is behind the walls of private property, USA Today reported.
The Constitution's Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures, and requires that authorities establish probable cause before courts can issues warrants.
"The idea that the government can send signals through the wall of your house to figure out what's inside is problematic," said Christopher Soghoian of the American Civil Liberties Union.
"Technologies that allow the police to look inside of a home are among the intrusive tools that police have," he told USA Today.
In a case involving a parole violation arrest, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver expressed uneasiness over the use of the technology, which the Marshals Service has possessed since 2012. The case brought attention to the Range-R which marshals used to track a Kansas man named Steven Denson.
Having established that someone was inside the home they were surveilling, authorities forced their way in and found Denson in possession of firearms, USA Today reported.
Denson's lawyer moved to quash the guns charge because marshals had no search warrant.
The three-judge federal court upheld a lower court's ruling on Denson's conviction. But, at the same time, the judges said the case posed "grave Fourth Amendment questions,"
Courthouse News Service reported.
A Marshals Service spokesman said that the equipment has been used to arrest dangerous criminals "based on pre-established probable cause in arrest warrants," USA Today reported.
The ACLU repeatedly complained that the Marshals Service has masked its use of advanced surveillance tools, including cellphone-monitoring technology, in tracking down suspects.
Former Marshals Service supervisor William Sorukas said, "If you disclose a technology or a method or a source, you're telling the bad guys along with everyone else," USA Today reported.
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