You may or may not like the line of cases, but this is really no change -- not even an extension -- from past cases.
As was noted a few posts up, the Supreme Court DID make a big change a few years back when they said you could NOT use outside heat detectors (thermal imaging), which had been common practice for a while
But aren't the two rulings inconsistent? I.e., don't you release a heat signature into public air, just as you do a scent? If so, why is a sniff okay but a thermal image not okay?
In my view, this is a potentially troubling development. The Fourth Amendment traditionally has focused on how the surveillance occurred, rather than the nature of the information obtained. Under the traditional approach, the government could not invade your property without a warrant no matter what information it wished to obtain. Under the rationale followed by the Court today, the government may be free to invade your property so long as they only obtain "non private" information. This is particularly troubling in the context of computer searches and seizures. Can the police send a computer virus to your computer that searches your computer for obscene images, or images of child pornography, and then reports back to the police whether such images are on your computer all without probable cause, or even any suspicion at all? The traditional answer would have been no: the police cannot enter your private property to search even for non-private stuff. But thanks to the increasong focus on the nature of the information rather than how the information is obtained, it's no longer so clear.
For a full discussion of this analysis, ClikenzeeMousenMovir.