>>>>>>
>>>>>>I was making a general point, Tracy. If you think the Bush appointees, especially the Roberts Court, have not had a huge role in undercutting individual rights, you have not been paying attention.
>>>>>
>>>>>And I'm lovin it! Cocaine dealers of the world NEED to have warrantless searches conducted!
>>>>
>>>>You mean suspected coke dealers, or coke dealers? I kind of thought that "innocent until proven guilty" was important.
>>>>It's a rather slippery slope that can get way out of control quickly. I recall a few years ago when I was living in FL I was woke up at 4:30am with a bunch of cops breaking down my door screaming "what are you growing in here?"....which I said "uhhh..file-servers?". As it turned out I had 15 or so computers running 24/7 and it was taking a lot of electricity and made the house warmer. Supposedly they had "searched" my house from a helicopter with infrared and decided I was a pot grower because of the extra heat. No warrant, probably cause...NOTHING. In the meantime it freaked out my neighbors and made me 1/2 a day late for work and they ruined my front door and frame beyond repair. And oh yeah one of the cops ran over my neighbors cat too.
>>>
>>>I believe I said - search incident to arrest. That means AFTER an arrest. As for kicking the doors on a high elecgtrical useage - sans warrant - I have a hard time believing they didn't have a warrant, if they actually forced their way into your house. Now, we do a thing we call "knock and talk" which is just what it says. We show up at a suspected problem's address, knock and ask the owner if we can come in and look around. You would be surprised at how many people let us in, without a warrant. AND, you would be surprised at how many times we get drugs, guns, money and peeps.
>>>
>>>Now, as to that high electric bill, you might want to investigate Virtual Servers! lol
>>
>>Ok I guess I didn't explain very well. They had a warrant to search my place when they showed up and destroyed my door - however the reason they were able to get that warrant is because they searched my house WITHOUT a warrant via infrared and a helicopter. My logic is that hey there were taking pictures of the inside of my house for no reason at all. Plus what kind of reason for a warrant would that be in the first place? So first they take infrared pics of the inside of my house, then use the results of that as a reason to take a look at my past electric bills...then use that to invade my home.
>>Prior to this happening, had they simply done what you call a "knock and talk" I would of laughed about it and let them in and explained even though the infrared thing would of ticked me off. Now if I was to get a "knock and talk" I would say "kiss my a--" and slam the door shut.
>
>The term "Probable cause" comes to mind.

Yes that is the argument I heard when I complained - but what "probable cause" was there to take infrared pictures of the inside of my house to begin with? They were just flying around looking inside everyones home. That sounds like illegal search with no probable cause to me.