THE SLIPPERY SLOPE OF OUR RIGHTS TO PRIVACY IS FURTHER ERODING AWAY AS TECHNOLOGY TO USED FOR OUR "SAFETY and SECURITY" IS FURTHER DEPLOYED

POLICE KILLINGS SPUR SENATOR TO ASK DOJ TO CONSIDER ‘THROUGH-THE-WALL’ TECHNOLOGY FOR FUGITIVE TASK FORCES

Bill Nelson’s request comes after four officers are murdered while on manhunts in Florida
January 27, 2011

WASHINGTON – A U.S. senator from the state where four law enforcement officers were killed within the past week while trying to capture wanted fugitives is asking the Justice Department to consider giving hand-held radar or heat-detecting devices that can penetrate walls to deputized federal agents when they have warrants and are on dangerous manhunts.

In a letter today to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) asked whether such new technologies - including so-called “sense-through-the-wall” devices, developed for use by the U.S. military - should be among the tools provided to agents of federal task forces when they have warrants to apprehend felons considered armed and dangerous.
In his letter to Holder, Nelson suggested he’d be willing to sponsor legislation in the Senate that would create a pilot program.  New technologies “could greatly shift the odds in favor of the good guys, before they have to enter a building where a fugitive is hiding out,”  Nelson wrote in his letter to Holder, in which he asked the Justice Department to consider the matter during a review of the recent attacks on law enforcement officers around the country.

Just since Sunday, 11 police officers reportedly have been shot in five separate on-the-job incidents across the country.

Nelson’s request, and the Justice Department’s review, come after the shootings of two police officers in Miami, and two in St. Petersburg.  All four were killed while trying to arrest fugitives who didn't want to be taken quietly.  The two officers in Miami were deputized by a fugitives task force created the U.S. Marshals Service; and, the two in St. Petersburg were assisting the task force.  A deputy U.S. marshal was wounded in the gunfight in St. Petersburg.  The suspect there, who was also killed, had been hiding in an attic.

Nelson noted the limited use of the new technology should pose no privacy concerns, because the Supreme Court already has ruled such devices can’t be employed without a warrant. [Kyllo v. United States.] 

To help in the hunt for dangerous felons, the Marshals Service set up fugitive task forces in Florida and six other regions nationwide.  The task forces were began in 2000 with the purpose of combining the efforts of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to find and arrest the most dangerous fugitives and assist in high profile investigations.

http://billnelson.senate.gov/news/details.cfm?id=330610&