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EFF Legal Intern Hannah Donahue co-wrote this post.
Last week, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled, in a case called People v. Tafoya, that three months of warrantless continuous video surveillance outside a home by the police violated the Fourth Amendment. We, along with the ACLU and the ACLU of Colorado, filed an amicus brief in the case.
The police, after receiving a tip about possible drug activity, attached a camera to a utility pole across from Rafael Tafoya’s home that captured views of his front yard, driveway, and back yard. The back yard and part of the driveway were enclosed within a six-foot high privacy fence, which obscured their view from passersby. However, the fence did not block the view from the high vantage of the utility pole. The police could observe a live video feed of the area and could remotely pan, tilt, and zoom the camera. They also stored the footage indefinitely, making it available for later review at any time.
At trial, Tafoya moved to suppress all evidence resulting from the warrantless pole camera surveillance, arguing that it violated the Fourth Amendment. The trial court denied the motion, and Tafoya was convicted on drug trafficking charges. A division of the court of appeals reversed, agreeing with Tafoya that the surveillance was unconstitutional.
Last week, Colorado’s Supreme Court upheld the court of appeals opinion, finding the continuous, long-term video surveillance violated Tafoya’s reasonable expectation of privacy. Citing to United States v. Jones and Carpenter v. United States, the court stated: “Put simply, the duration, continuity, and nature of surveillance matter when considering all the facts and circumstances in a particular case.” The court held that 24/7 surveillance for more than three months represented a level of intrusiveness that “a reasonable person would not have anticipated.”
This ruling is in line with a recent opinion from the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in another case involving lon
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Read the original article: Colorado Supreme Court Rules Three Months of Warrantless Video Surveillance Violates the Constitution