In what case did judges face the question of a warrantless scan of a house with a thermal imaging device?

The case of Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001) which was held in a 5-4 decision in the Supreme Court for the use of a thermal imaging device to a private property without warrant. In this case, the United States Department of the Interior, on January 16th, 1992 used a device outside of Danny Lee Kyllo´s house in Oregon. This device, used for thermal imaging showed unusual amounts of heat or radiation coming from the side walls of the garage, as well as the roof; this, in comparison to the temperature in the rest of the house. This led to federal judges obtaining a warrant, where they found 100 plants of marijuana in Kyllo´s house. He was charged with growing the plant; he then pleaded a conditional guilty. The initial assumption after the thermal scans was the in order to grow marijuana indoors; the plants needed a certain amount of light in order for them to undergo photosynthesis, hence the unusual heat radiation emitted from  the roof and side walls of Danny Lee Kyllo´s garage.  

The Supreme Court Justices had spoken; they ruled 5-4 after analyzing that the person, in this case Kyllo, had an expectation of privacy in his house, and therefore, the use of the thermal device was unreasonable and unconstitutional. They stated that the government could not use technology to conduct searches, even if this meant not entering the house. Justice Scalia protected the fourth amendment at the ¨entrance to the house.¨ For the Justice; this meant protecting the individual from all types of warrantless surveillance, but also against future technologies and other sophisticated surveillance equipment. She made the difference clear between ¨off the wall¨ and ¨through the wall.¨ She stated that both physically violated the individual´s right to his or her privacy.  

Towards the end, Kyllo did appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and stated that thermal imaging was a search under the Fourth Amendment. After all, on September 9th, 1999, Kyllo´s petition to the Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari was granted.  

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