In any event, if a method is used to acquire signal *within* a home, would that acquisition be forbidden by the thermal decision? That is, if a signal is sent into a home to acquire an interior signal, is that a violation?
This may seem to be similar to a bug planted just outside the face of an exterior wall of a home, or reading the vibrations of window glass, but I'm trying to imagine an alternative technology to these, perhaps one that remains classified.
BTW, there has been speculation that NONSTOP and/or HIJACK are codewords for acoustic vulnerabilities of the sort I'm fumbling with.
Interesting: especially in light of the fact that the Supreme Court has held that monitoring (with a pen register) the telephone numbers that an individual calls from his home is *not* a search, in that it constitutes information already being monitored by the telephone company. I suppose this same logic would hold true for what's already being monitored by the electric company, or, say, what your ISP is already monitoring. So perhaps the "solution" to getting around warrants would lie less in superadvanced MASINT than in giving the private sector incentives for doing more monitoring themselves--while quietly developing your own set of tools to take advantage of it. A sobering thought. ~Faustine.