Yes, a dog does "sniff every molecule of the air," but only within it's genetic capabilities. While many breeds of dogs have an olfactory system about 50 times that of humans, it is not a scientific instrument that measures all raw data. It can't pick up everything, including some minute trace elements of narcotics. Furthermore, most narcotic detection dogs are typically only trained to recognize 5-7 different odors, and alert on all of them in the same fashion. They generally aren't trained to recognize other inanimate things (with the rare exceptions of explosives or cadavers), which may be perfectly legal, and don't indicate by their behavior exactly which odor they sense (except with explosives!). Finally, while many are cross trained in utility functions, such as tracking or trailing, the associative training is very different and produces a different alert behavior.

BTW - no I don't believe, under the circumstances that I suspect you are referring, that you can use "sophisticated technology" to hear a conversation "from thousands of feet away" in a closed room. Under KATZ and/or RIOS, even though a person is in a public place, his conversation that he seeks to preserve as private _may_ be protected under the 4th Amendment.



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