Yeah all that is well and good, except it violates the concept and spirit of expectation of privacy. The dog is a tool in this case, specialized for the purpose of sniffing out drug related contraban in containers. A packet sniffer is a tool to examine the data content of the IP container. The IR "goggles" are tools to see the heat output of things in a container. If our eyes were set up to see into the infrared spectrum we would not need the goggles. If our olfactory processes were keen enough we wouldn't need the dog. The facts are that we DO need these tools, but their use violates a reasonable expectation of privacy, since without the use of the tools the contents of the containers in question would be a mystery. Had the officers smelled contraband and then called for the dog, that would not have been a violation, in that, through carelessness or whatever, the suspect could not expect privacy; it meets the plain sight standard.

The only way to insure data flow meets the reasonable criteria of expected privacy, is when the data flows over a public data exchange, it is encrypted. MAE West could be construed as a public data exchange, but the Sprint NAP would not be. The FBI or Homeland security dropping a sniffer off at Joe's Internet Access would seem to be a violation of expectation of privacy. Garbage can on the street - public...Garbage can in your yard - private.

It seems that, when weighed against the provided information, the US Supreme Court has made a seriously scary call here.

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