A US Appeals Court recently sided with police on a case involving a warrentless video recording inside of a suspect’s home, thinkprogress.com reported.
Mr. Wahchumwah, the convicted bald eagle feather and pelt seller, invited an undercover police agent into his home to view his bald eagle collection. The officer recorded audio and video as evidence inside Wahchumwah’s home. That evidence was used against Wahchumwah in court.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued the statement regarding their decision:
We are persuaded that it is not “constitutionally relevant” whether an informant utilizes an audio-video device, rather than merely an audio recording device, to record activities occurring inside a home, into which the informer has been invited. When Wahchumwah invited Agent Romero into his home, he forfeited his expectation of privacy as to those areas that were “knowingly expose[d] to” Agent Romero. Wahchumwah cannot reasonably argue that the recording violates his legitimate privacy interests when it reveals no more than what was already visible to the agent.
None of this would be possible have without the seemingly limitless advances in audio and video surveillance technology. Discretely recording high-definition video on a portable device has only become possible in the last twenty years, and our courts have yet to establish meaningful restrictions to these newly invasive capabilities.
In some states, including California, the act of recording without “two party consent” is illegal to begin with.
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