Thermal Imaging Decision Applicable to TEMPEST?

[Bill Stewart]

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 :-)