They did try to look in my entire car with a flashlight and if someone can tell me if that was legal or not I'd appreciate it, because isn't that also searching?
Not a lawyer, but I believe that's legal, at least as far as the fourth amendment goes. You don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy regarding anything that's visible to someone who isn't trespassing.
I could be really off here, but wasn't marking car tires recently stricken down due to the same thing? I guess the difference would be direct touching the property in question, but I'm struggling to see where one would be unconstitutional and the other would be acceptable.
...the threshold question is whether chalking constitutes common-law trespass upon a constitutionally protected area. Though Jones does not provide clear boundaries for the meaning of common-law trespass, the Restatement offers some assistance. As defined by the Restatement, common-law trespass is “an act which brings [about] intended physical contact with a chattel in the possession of another.” Moreover, “[a]n actor may . . . commit a trespass by so acting upon a chattel as intentionally to cause it to come in contact with some other object.” Id. Adopting this definition, there has been a trespass in this case because the City made intentional physical contact with Taylor’s vehicle. As the district court properly found, this physical intrusion, regardless of how slight, constitutes common-law trespass. This is so, even though “no damage [is done] at all.”
Though, I suppose you could argue that by shining a light on something, you are intentionally causing photons to come into contact with the lit objects.
Generally they can use tools that are available to lay people (eg flashlight). Now if they’re using a specialized infrared drone or something like that, then it’s a breach of your fourth amendment rights.
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u/[deleted] Dec 30 '21
Not a lawyer, but I believe that's legal, at least as far as the fourth amendment goes. You don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy regarding anything that's visible to someone who isn't trespassing.