Eyes in The Sky

Even as the Supreme Court clamped strict limits on affirmative action last week, the Justices moved to scale back the right of privacy: by a 5-to-4 vote, the court ruled that police do not need a warrant to engage in low-altitude spying from a helicopter. The decision upheld the action of a Florida sheriff's officer who observed marijuana growing in a resident's greenhouse by circling over it at 400 ft. The court found that the police action violated no "reasonable expectation" of privacy, because overflights by helicopters | at 400 ft. are not unlawful or unusual.

The high bench's ruling reinforced its increasingly narrow view of privacy. The Justices have already given police broader powers to search cars, inspect fenced-in fields and rummage through curbside household garbage without a warrant. Dissenting Justice William Brennan found the parallel between last week's decision and George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four alarming. "In the far distance a helicopter skimmed down between the roofs," he quoted from the book, ". . . and darted away again with a curving flight. It was the Police Patrol, snooping into people's windows." Asked Brennan: "Who can read this passage without a shudder?"