What Are Your Fourth Amendment Rights?
Video Transcribed: Can the police use surveillance equipment on my home? Hello, I’m Ty Smith, an Oklahoma City lawyer with Wirth Law.
The answer is maybe. It depends. How’s that for a lawyer answer for you? Depends on what equipment they’re using. Before we even get into the type of equipment, I want you to keep this in mind. You have a reasonable expectation of privacy. And in descending order, meaning the most to the least, it goes your house, car, or person. So to surveil your house, this is where you have the greatest expectation of privacy. And the police, almost always, unless there’s some kind of emergency, have to get a warrant to enter your house to search for criminality. Okay.
So if you put information or something out into the public, that dampens and lowers your expectation of privacy because you willfully put it out into the public, okay? So think of it this way. If a policeman is sitting in his patrol car across the street from your house and just watching your house, do they need a warrant to do that? No. No. Just because the only thing they’re looking at is your house. And anyone can look at what’s going on at your house from the sidewalk, from a public place. They can see what’s going on. You don’t have an expectation of privacy there.
Where it gets more invasive is when devices are being used such as a listening device. If the police are using a listening device to hear what’s going on inside your house, what have they done? They have now supplemented their physical presence in your house with the information from this listening device. They’ve inserted themselves into your house, okay? They’re going to need a warrant for that. Or if they use infrared cameras to seek out the warm spots in your house, the same thing.
They have now supplemented their physical presence in your house with information from these devices, so they’re going to need a warrant for that. We’ve already talked about how to get a warrant, but anything short of that, if the cops are just sitting here outside your house, they can even set up cameras outside your house if they want to, they can do that.
Now, there’s a Supreme Court case that’s currently that’s going to be heard in a couple of months that might flip this around, so we might have to do a follow-up, but as of right now, they can do that. Okay? If you would like to speak more about your Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure, I would love to speak to you about this.
Once more, I’m Ty Smith, a criminal defense attorney in Oklahoma with Wirth Law. I’m at theoklahomacityattorney.com, my phone number is (405) 888-5400. Call me anytime. Would love to speak to you about this.
