At 09:43 AM 06/12/2001 -0400, Declan McCullagh wrote:
BTW John your cryptome.org writeup says: "This decisions appears to be applicable to TEMPEST technology, the first instance to make use of this technology illegal." I'm not sure that's accurate.
First, this is a Fourth Amendment case, and the court only decided what limits should be placed on police, not private citizens.
TEMPEST really refers to two kinds of technology - keeping equipment quiet, and reading signals from not-quiet-enough equipment. The former category is the main thing that would apply to private citizens, and it's not addressed here. I suppose there's also the issue of whether police can use evidence eavesdropped by private citizens, but there are probably similar cases dealing with cameras.
Second, the ruling would allow TEMPEST monitoring by police if they get a warrant. No reading of it would ban police TEMPEST surveillance outright, and warrants are not that difficult to get.
Agreed. The decision sounded like it there'd have been no issue if the police had obtained a warrant first - after all, they could have no-knocked on the door and come in, if they'd had any actual evidence. And they could have lurked outside the house watching for suspicious-looking visitors if they thought this was commercial. And unfortunately, just because the guy won in the Supremes doesn't mean he gets his dope back :-)