Knott Case Summary
The first Fourth Amendment concern here is in the speed control drone that the police used to identify Kevin Kilgrave’s backpack. The drone, equipped with a high-resolution camera—one far more eagle-eyed than a human’s—discerned from afar that Kilgrave’s backpack bore images of yawning baby cats as Kilgrave was riding on public streets. Our Fourth Amendment inquiry is whether the police acquired this information via an unreasonable search. Katz v. United States (1967) guides our inquiry, and that case renders the drone surveillance consistent with the Fourth Amendment. In Katz, the Court held that covertly recording calls made in a public telephone booth violates the Fourth Amendment. Katz is relevant to the instant case because it sets forth
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Knotts (1983) provides an apt framework to evaluate this question. In Knotts, a beeper device “had been placed in a container of chloroform” (Jones Slip. 8) much in the same manner as here—asking the distributor to install the device in the container. The device “allow[ed] law enforcement to monitor the location of the container” (Id). Also like Knotts, police here used the installed device to track their target’s movements on public thoroughfares. The Court held in Knotts that “there had been no infringement of Knotts’ reasonable expectation of privacy since the information obtained—the location of the automobile carrying the container on public roads…—had been voluntarily conveyed to the public” (8). So too here; the device only gave police information that Kilgrave knowingly extended to the public. Likewise, Kilgrave would not be able to invoke the Fourth Amendment’s heightened protection of personal effects here, for the police installed the tracking device in the headlight before it was his property. Indeed, “[the Court] specifically declined to consider” the effect of the distributor’s consent “on [Knotts’s] Fourth Amendment analysis” (Jones 8). Hence, under existing law, no trouble arises from tainting an effect before it becomes the target’s property. Consequently, the police’s surreptitious bicycle tracking does not qualify as an unreasonable search under the Fourth
Knotts (1983) provides an apt framework to evaluate this question. In Knotts, a beeper device “had been placed in a container of chloroform” (Jones Slip. 8) much in the same manner as here—asking the distributor to install the device in the container. The device “allow[ed] law enforcement to monitor the location of the container” (Id). Also like Knotts, police here used the installed device to track their target’s movements on public thoroughfares. The Court held in Knotts that “there had been no infringement of Knotts’ reasonable expectation of privacy since the information obtained—the location of the automobile carrying the container on public roads…—had been voluntarily conveyed to the public” (8). So too here; the device only gave police information that Kilgrave knowingly extended to the public. Likewise, Kilgrave would not be able to invoke the Fourth Amendment’s heightened protection of personal effects here, for the police installed the tracking device in the headlight before it was his property. Indeed, “[the Court] specifically declined to consider” the effect of the distributor’s consent “on [Knotts’s] Fourth Amendment analysis” (Jones 8). Hence, under existing law, no trouble arises from tainting an effect before it becomes the target’s property. Consequently, the police’s surreptitious bicycle tracking does not qualify as an unreasonable search under the Fourth