A
public defender in Georgia is hoping to have his
client’s case dismissed by a Georgia Superior Court after
claiming that evidence against his client was illegally obtained.
James Brundgie has been charged with the
manufacture of marijuana, possession with intent to distribute, and
possession of a controlled substance after a judge approved a
warrant to search his property after thermal imaging detected a
“hot spot” in his garage. If the search warrant is upheld it will
be a worrying precedent to set as police forces and other agencies
will be able to justify thermal imaging of entire neighborhoods in
search of similar “hot spots”.

The public defender, Benjamin Pearlman, is rightly arguing that
the warrant should never have been issued as Georgia law states
that a warrant may not be issued “for anything other than physical,
tangible evidence,” It is hard to see exactly how a thermal scan
fits into the category of physical or tangible evidence.

As Pearlman stated in his filing:

Logically, search warrants are sought by officers to enable them
to search for and seize evidence which would be brought to court
and introduced in the course of proving the state’s case against a
defendant…Heat or heat loss, standing alone, cannot be brought to
court for a jury to examine.

Andrew Napolitano
wrote last week that there is already a worrying amount of
surveillance and evidence-mining going on with the most asinine of
justifications. Current legislation allows government agencies to
share the “evidence” collected by domestic surveillance with other
government agencies so long as “the recipient is reasonably
perceived to have a specific, lawful governmental function” It is
worrying that the definition of “evidence” is being stretched as
far as the English language will allow and that the means by which
it is being gathered is permitted in the first place. As Napolitano
pointed out, this is the first time since the Civil War that
military personnel are being deployed within the United States to
spy on citizens, and the use of similar technologies by police
authorities is hardly any less worrying. 

The unfortunate reality is that largely beneficial breakthroughs
in technology have granted the government and police forces an
arsenal of irresistible toys that make intrusion a lot easier and
more disguised. Let’s hope that the Georgia Superior Court rules in
favor of James Brundgie. Not only is it questionable whether
thermal “hot spots” fit the criterion for evidence, but allowing
the use of thermal scans is an intrusion too far that could soon
become the norm.