In 1992 a federal agent sat in a parked car in Florence, Oregon, pointed a thermal imager at the triplex across the street, and never set foot on the property. Nine years later that scan became Kyllo v. United States — the Supreme Court case that still decides whether police can point a thermal camera at your house. It isn't a man in a parked car anymore. It's a drone that launches when somebody calls 911, is over the scene in under a minute, and carries a thermal camera. I'm Roland Mumford, a civil rights lawyer. One question: do police need a warrant to point a thermal drone at your house, probable cause, or nothing at all? The answer runs through a 25-year-old case with a three-word escape hatch built into it — "not in general public use" — and nobody has decided what that means now that a thermal camera costs two hundred dollars and flies.
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