CDR: Re: police IR searches to Supremes

[Sampo A Syreeni]

On Wed, 27 Sep 2000, jim bell wrote:

>You probably don't understand how this IR technology works.

I do, actually. It's not all that complicated.

>Now, American police are supposed to work on the standard of "probable
>cause."  While, thank heaven, I'm not a lawyer, I have experience with the
>high level of dishonesty in various police-type organizations in America.
>"Probable cause" OUGHT to mean that the police have determined that, more
>likely than not, a crime is being committed as evidenced by a particular
>piece of evidence.  But evidence of a warm house is just and only that:
>Evidence of a warm house.

I was neither defending a raid based on IR imaging (which I think is
reprehensible behavior, akin to racial profiling), just as I'm not
advocating extended police powers in case of drug offences (I *am*, after
all, an abolitionist).

Sampo Syreeni <decoy at iki.fi>, aka decoy, student/math/Helsinki university