While you make a good argument in this article, I feel your logic is slightly flawed. The dog never went into the trunk to find the drugs. The dog is only able to breathe air, which was actually outside the trunk. Therefore, I do not think this is equivalent to rummaging through the person's trunk or to reading the contents of email messages, automated or not. While the net result looks the same to a law enforcement officer (the probable cause bit flips from 0 to 1 only in certain cases), the behavior of the agent (dog or email filter) is quite different. That seems fairly plain to me and hopefully would stand up in court (although not guaranteed in the U.S. legal system).

I would interpret the dog breathing the air around the car more or less equivalent to peeking into the windows. I might be wrong on that, but I really think the fact that a dog can detect drugs merely by proximity is the whole reason they are conscripted for this type of service.

Thanks for the thought that went into the article and for making your point nonetheless. It is never clear how non-technical issues will later affect issues of Internet privacy and other technical concerns.

[ reply ]

Link to this comment: http://www.securityfocus.com/comments/columns/297/30415#30415