FCC’s Warrantless Household Searches Alarm Experts | Hacker News Reader

FCC’s Warrantless Household Searches Alarm Experts

wired.com

19 pointsvaksel12 comments

Pirate radio stations have been operating for a while and people are rarely charged with a crime. This guy from Corpus Christi handled it like hell. When he talked to the FCC agent he admitted that he was running the CB station. The agent never had to enter the house to prove it, this guy was free and clear until he said 'yup, that's mine alright'.

As far as I can tell the article is saying that this could turn sour. The FCC is reserving this right and it could have disastrous consequences. If the EFF is really worried about it I'm sure they'd be glad to defend someone and hopefully set a positive precedent. (If not the EFF, possibly the ACLU.)

In short: avoid talking to cops. When you do, don't say much.

never, ever, ever, ever talk to the cops.

this video may have been linked here earlier but please watch it in its entirety. very important to know your right (us citizens).

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4097602514885833865

Agreed, I've seen that video and I sent it around like crazy. It's important to know what you're up against especially when your innocent.

One of the exeptions to the "gotta get a warrant" rule in US constitutional law is the "plain view" exception--if the cops see a marijuana plant through your front window, they don't need a warrant to go busting in and seizing it. So if the FCC's monitoring equipment indicates that radio transmissions powerful enough to require a license are coming out of your house, would the transmitter count as being in "plain view"?

Certainly not. You use eyes to view.

You may be right... Some of the pages I found from Googling claimed that the "plain view" exemption also applies to hearing, smell, etc., but I'm having trouble finding an actual citation. The closest thing I can find is Kyllo v. US, where the Supremes said that you need a warrant to use thermal imaging to look for the heat of marijuana-growing lamps, even if you never step onto the suspect's property to use the imager.

Wait. Is there some actual case at hand where the FCC abused this power against a private citizen, or does EFF just want to pick a fight here?

I read it as the EFF just picking a fight. They don't mention any current cases in the article and I couldn't find one on google.

At the end of the article, they cite a case in Corpus Christi where they asked to inspect equipment in a man's house (he had been illegally rebroadcasting radio). The man refused. The FCC left. The man was fined.

Does it matter? What if instead of searches, the FCC was granted the right to kill people? Wouldn't you want someone, anyone to get a judicial review of this right immediately? It doesn't matter to me that no private citizens have been affected by this yet. Why should we wait? If it is unconstitutional, which it seems to be, then they shouldn't be able to do it, period.

Well, there's a pick your battles thing here. Every municipality has some law like "the commissioner may inspect the premises at any time for violations of code", etc. Those provisions are unconstitutional but as a practical matter are not the genesis of a police state.

There are a lot of bugs in the law, so we should probably prioritize the most severe runtime errors.

Parsing this headline could have been easier. Who are the alarm experts? How about: "FCC searching households without warrants, with debatable legality?"

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