OFF THE WIRE
agingrebel.com
Both USA Today and the Daily Mail reported
yesterday that at least 50 American police forces, including the Federal
Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Marshals Service, have been using a
device called Range-R (pronounced ranger) Radar to conduct warrantless
searches of homes for at least two years.
The Range-R is manufactured by L-3 Communications Holdings, a
Torrance, California company that manufactures command and control,
communications, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance software
and products and avionics for the Department of Defense, the Department
of Homeland Security, various intelligence agencies and NASA. The
Range-R was developed as a military product. According to USA Today,
L-3 didn’t begin marketing the device to police forces until 2012.
According to promotional materials distributed by L-3, the company has
been marketing the device to police forces for at least five years.
L-3
According to an L-3 brochure published in 2010:
“L-3’s Range-R is a lightweight handheld radar system designed to
detect people through walls. Within seconds, Range-R informs the user of
the presence of moving or near-stationary personnel and the distance,
or range, to the person. Range-R provides vital intelligence necessary
to safely undertake a wide variety of law enforcement and search and
rescue operations.
“Range-R detects even the slightest movements, including those of
normal human breathing, with a probability of detection greater than 95
percent, while maintaining a false alarm rate (FAR) of less than 5
percent. With an effective range of up to 50 feet, the system can ‘see’
through walls, floors and ceilings constructed of reinforced concrete,
cement block, wood, brick, adobe, glass and other common non-metallic
construction materials.”
The device costs $6,000. The Marshalls have admitted to buying 30 of them.
According to the brochure, five years ago L-3 was selling the device to:
“First Responders: Hostage situations, stand-offs, natural disasters
and burning buildings are a few examples of scenarios where Range-R’s
see-through-the-wall technology can be utilized to locate persons hidden
from view – without putting the lives of first responders in
unnecessary danger. Range-R enables police, SWAT, emergency medical
teams, firefighters and other special operations teams to efficiently
and effectively allocate their precious time and resources when split
second decisions must be made.
“For example: police and/or SWAT units can determine the presence and
location of assailants or hostages in a building. Search and rescue
teams can locate injured people inside buildings. Firefighters can
quickly determine whether people are trapped in a building. With near
immediate analysis and results, Range-R provides first responders with
critical information that may make the difference between life and
death.”
Denson
Police use of the device came to light in a Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in a case titled United States v. Steven J. Denson.
The ruling was filed on December 30, 2014. In that case, the government
appealed the suppression of evidence obtained during a warrantless
search in Wichita, Kansas. The Tenth Circuit explains:
“Steven Denson was on the lam. After his conviction for armed robbery
and a spell in prison he quit reporting to his probation officer as his
sentence required. For a time, Mr. Denson appeared gone for good. But
authorities weren’t quick to give up their search and eventually they
found his name on a residential Wichita utility account. With an arrest
warrant in hand they showed up at the listed address. When a handheld
Doppler radar device and other evidence suggested Mr. Denson might be
present inside the house, the officers entered. Quickly they found Mr.
Denson along with a stash of guns, guns he lacked the right to possess
by virtue of his felony conviction. This led Mr. Denson to plead guilty
to a federal firearm charge. At the same time, he preserved the right to
appeal the district court’s denial of his Fourth Amendment motion to
suppress. Exercising that right now, he seeks reversal….”
The appeal was brought by an Assistant Federal Public Defender named
Timothy J. Henry on Denson’s behalf. A three judge panel ruled that the
search did violate the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. The Fourth
Amendment prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures and requires all
search warrants to be approved by a judge. The original intent of the
Amendment was the historic notion that “a man’s home is his castle.”
Kyllo
Although L-3 has been selling the device to “first responders” and
Swat for five years, no court seems to have heard of it until recently.
In the decision, Judge Neil M. Gorsuch wrote:
“The government brought with it a Doppler radar device capable of
detecting from outside the home the presence of ‘human breathing and
movement within.’ All this packed into a hand-held unit ‘about 10 inches
by four inches wide, 10 inches long.’ The government admits that it
used the radar before entering – and that the device registered
someone’s presence inside. It’s obvious to us and everyone else in this
case that the government’s warrantless use of such a powerful tool to
search inside homes poses grave Fourth Amendment questions. New
technologies bring with them not only new opportunities for law
enforcement to catch criminals but also new risks for abuse and new ways
to invade constitutional rights.”
Gorsuch also cited a 2001 ruling by the Supreme Court in a case titled Kyllo v. United States.
In that case, the government used a thermal imaging device outside the
Florence, Oregon home of a man named Lee Kyllo. The government suspected
Kyllo was growing marijuana inside and the device indicated an unusual
amount of heat, presumably from broad spectrum light sources, was
leaking out his house. In that case a majority of the court, with
Justice John Paul Stevens dissenting, ruled the use of the device to spy
on Kyllo was illegal. In the Court’s ruling, Judge Antonin Scalia
wrote, “Where, as here, the Government uses a device that is not in
general public use, to explore details of a private home that would
previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion, the
surveillance is a Fourth Amendment ‘search,’ and is presumptively
unreasonable without a warrant.”
Militarized Police
Although the Tenth Circuit did not address the issue, the widespread
deployment of military devices like the Range-R to increasingly
militarized police departments raises a basic question: Where exactly is
the line between martial law and “civilian” militarized police forces?
Since the War on Global Terror began a dozen years ago. militarized
police have routinely short circuited the concept of due process to
conduct warrantless searches and punitive raids on people the police
distrust or of whom they disapprove.
In a landmark Supreme Court decision from 1866 titled Ex parte Milligan, the Court ruled:
“The nation began its life in 1776, with a protest against military
usurpation. It was one of the grievances set forth in the Declaration of
Independence, that the king of Great Britain had ‘affected to render
the military independent of and superior to the civil power.’ The
attempts of General Gage, in Boston, and of Lord Dunmore, in Virginia,
to enforce martial rule, excited the greatest indignation. Our fathers
never forgot their principles; and though the war by which they
maintained their independence was a revolutionary one, though their
lives depended on their success in arms, they always asserted and
enforced the subordination of the military to the civil arm.”
“Martial law … destroys every guarantee of the Constitution.”
“Civil liberty and this kind of martial law cannot endure together;
the antagonism is irreconcilable; and, in the conflict, one or the other
must perish.”
