Police are using a secret new radar that can see inside homes

At least 50 U.S. law enforcement agencies quietly deployed radars that let them effectively see inside homes, with little notice to the courts or the public.

DHS run law enforcement agencies have secretly equipped their officers with radar devices that allow them to spy through the walls of houses to see whether anyone is inside, a practice raising new concerns about the extent of government surveillance.

Those agencies, including the FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service, began deploying the radar systems more than two years ago with little notice to the courts and no public disclosure of when or how they would be used. The technology raises legal and privacy issues because the U.S. Supreme Court has said officers generally cannot use high-tech sensors to tell them about the inside of a person's house without first obtaining a search warrant.

The radars work like finely tuned motion detectors, using radio waves to zero in on movements as slight as human breathing from a distance of more than 50 feet. They can detect whether anyone is inside of a house, where they are and whether they are moving.

Current and former federal officials say the information is critical for keeping officers safe if they need to storm buildings or rescue hostages. But privacy advocates and judges have nonetheless expressed concern about the circumstances in which law enforcement agencies may be using the radars — and the fact that they have so far done so without public scrutiny.

"The idea that the government can send signals through the wall of your house to figure out what's inside is problematic," said Christopher Soghoian, the American Civil Liberties Union's principal technologist. "Technologies that allow the police to look inside of a home are among the intrusive tools that police have."

Agents' use of the radars was largely unknown until December, when a federal appeals court in Denver said officers had used one before they entered a house to arrest a man wanted for violating his parole. The judges expressed alarm that agents had used the new technology without a search warrant, warning that "the government's warrantless use of such a powerful tool to search inside homes poses grave Fourth Amendment questions."

Federal contract records show the Marshals Service began buying the radars in 2012, and has so far spent at least $180,000 on them. Justice Department spokesman Patrick Rodenbush said officials are reviewing the court's decision. He said the Marshals Service "routinely pursues and arrests violent offenders based on pre-established probable cause in arrest warrants" for serious crimes.

The device the Marshals Service and others are using, known as the Range-R, looks like a sophisticated stud-finder. Its display shows whether it has detected movement on the other side of a wall and, if so, how far away it is — but it does not show a picture of what's happening inside. The Range-R's maker, L-3 Communications, estimates it has sold about 200 devices to 50 law enforcement agencies at a cost of about $6,000 each.

Click here to read Range-R's FAQ. Below are two examples of how intrusive it is:

"RANGE-R is sensitive enough to detect motion caused by a person’s breathing. Therefore if the person is alive, RANGE-R should detect them."
 
"RANGE-R’s high sensitivity will detect people movement through multiple walls. This is, especially true for interior drywall. Since range to the target is displayed, an operator with some knowledge of the building structure can often determine whether a person is in a back room or a front room."

The radars appear to have drawn little scrutiny from state or federal courts. The federal appeals court's decision published last month was apparently the first by an appellate court to reference the technology or its implications.

That case began when a fugitive-hunting task force headed by the U.S. Marshals Service tracked a man named Steven Denson, wanted for violating his parole, to a house in Wichita. Before they forced the door open, Deputy U.S. Marshal Josh Moff testified, he used a Range-R to detect that someone was inside.

Moff's report made no mention of the radar; it said only that officers "developed reasonable suspicion that Denson was in the residence."

Agents arrested Denson for the parole violation and charged him with illegally possessing two firearms they found inside. The agents had a warrant for Denson's arrest but did not have a search warrant. Denson's lawyer sought to have the guns charge thrown out, in part because the search began with the warrantless use of the radar device.

Three judges on the federal 10th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the search, and Denson's conviction, on other grounds. Still, the judges wrote, they had "little doubt that the radar device deployed here will soon generate many questions for this court."

The Marshals Service has faced criticism for concealing other surveillance tools. Last year, the ACLU obtained an e-mail from a Sarasota, Fla., police sergeant asking officers from another department not to reveal that they had received information from a cellphone-monitoring tool known as a stingray. "In the past, and at the request of the U.S. Marshals, the investigative means utilized to locate the suspect have not been revealed," he wrote, suggesting that officers instead say they had received help from "a confidential source."

William Sorukas, a former supervisor of the Marshals Service's domestic investigations arm, said deputies are not instructed to conceal the agency's high-tech tools, but they also know not to advertise them. "If you disclose a technology or a method or a source, you're telling the bad guys along with everyone else," he said.

Legal experts told ArsTechnica that use of a device like the Range-R could be in violation of the Kyllo decision, and perhaps even an even more recent decision.

“Does Kyllo apply here? I think so insofar as the suspect had a reasonable expectation to privacy in his home,” Brian Owsley, a former federal judge who is now a law professor at Indiana Tech, e-mailed Ars.

He pointed to a 2013 5-4 Supreme Court decision (Florida v. Jardines) in which the court found that law enforcement could not send a drug-sniffing dog to the porch of a drug suspect absent a warrant.

“Turning to Jardines, that case is also illustrative here in that it provides a second basis for finding in favor of the defendant because the use of the device is arguably a trespass,” Owsley continued. “Law enforcement is actually sending something into Denson’s home. Indeed, sending the sensor into the residence is arguably more invasive that measuring the heat coming out of the house in Kyllo.  In the end, however, for both individual’s the sanctity of the home is violated with a warrantless search.”

United States v. Denson is a federal firearms case—in September 2013, his attorney’s filed a motion to suppress evidence. There, as USA Today reported, a deputy US Marshal testified in court that the Range-R device could detect a human presence through walls. Steven Denson of Kansas pleaded guilty and then was sentenced to 18 months in prison in December 2013. He then appealed to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld the search in a December 30, 2014 decision.

“While it is our position to not discuss or disclose any investigative techniques, the Department of Justice is currently reviewing the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling," Patrick Rodenbush, a spokesman for the Department of Justice, told ArsTechnica by e-mail.

Still, Linda Lye, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California similarly agreed with Owsley’s analysis.

“The Supreme Court has made clear that the home has very special status under the Fourth Amendment,” she e-mailed. “That is where our privacy interests are at their highest. Even using a dog to sniff around the immediate exterior of the home presumptively requires a warrant. Using a sophisticated surveillance tool to detect information about the interior of the home clear does as well.”

Meanwhile, Hanni Fakhoury, a former federal public defender and a current attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Ars that he had never heard of these handheld radar devices prior to USA Today’s reporting. He said that in the case of Denson, the court sidestepped the underlying issue.

“What’s remarkable to me is that the US Marshals would use the device without a search warrant when it so clearly falls within Kyllo,” he said by e-mail. “The more interesting question is whether other agencies buying these devices are using them without a search warrant, something that’s not entirely clear yet.”
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/01/19/police-radar-see-through-walls/22007615/
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/01/cops-get-handheld-radar-that-can-detect-people-breathing-through-walls/