Of course people with terrariums and other heat sources may be victims in the cross fire of the War on Drugs.
Incidentally, afaik, current US law says aircraft must fly five hundred feet above any man made structure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_rights
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyllo_v._United_States
Before this decision they could do a thermal image of your home and if it gave off a certain heat signature, the police could use that a probably cause to get a warrant to search the home.
Now, they need a warrant just to do the thermal imaging.
In the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has the sole authority to control all airspace, exclusively determining the rules and requirements for its use. Typically, in the "Uncontrolled" category of airspace, any pilot can fly any aircraft as low as he or she wants, subject to the requirement of maintaining a 500-foot (150 m) distance from people and man-made structures...
So the law says that the FAA gets to determine the rules, and the current rules that the FAA has implemented require a 500 foot distance from structures. However, it would seem that the FAA could change these regulations tomorrow without any changes having to be made to federal law.
If a tree falls in the woods and nobody hears it, should a noise complaint be filed? I'd say no.
If fraud occurs at my business and is undetected, is it not a crime?
Politically, I am against drug prohibition. Legalize it all, and demand warrants for non-visible spectrum imagery of homes. But the idea that a crime isn't a crime if no one notices just doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
He finally quit and sold the house specifically because he was tired of having agents show up on his door step every month, sometimes with guns drawn.
What about LED grow lights? Also, one could rig a heat pump so that the extra heat would be dumped into a backyard "heated pool." This would probably be undetectable.
Suppose a related idea would be that the image captures from airport body scanners could be intercepted. I have not seen any reference to such an action, at all. Anyone have ideas about an attack vector for those?
As long as we're not talking about cutting other officers and patrols, I would fully support police stations hiring a couple of people to alternate flying a dozen or so drones around the city. Just put some charging stations on top of light poles or city buildings, and have them automated to fly back when power is sufficiently low.
I really don't get why people are averse to such things so long as we keep in mind that they are tools are to help people. They're not magic robots that can not completely take the place of people. If we ever get to a point where it even seems like that, then that's another conversation to have. But we're not there yet, and I see no reason to not use tools if they seem worthwhile.
/edit: I understand that any tool can be abused, but can someone explain to me why this is met with such anger? Barring thermal or other vision modes, what's the huge difference in this and patrolling? (Aside from not being seen.)
There aren't easy answers but it ultimately goes back to the 'Why do you need to hide anything if you don't do anything bad?' argument. And we already know plenty of answers to that argument.
Police know people are lazy and/or complacent.
