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What about you walking out in your front yard in the nude to pick your pot plants? It's on private property. So shouldn't that be a protected freedom?

Straw man. If you're growing pot in plain view, the police can quite easily get a warrant to search your house.

If I'm driving along and violating no law and the cops set up checkpoints in order to have dogs sniff my car, the situation is quite different.

Straw man. If you're growing pot in plain view, the police can quite easily get a warrant to search your house. If I'm driving along and violating no law and the cops set up checkpoints in order to have dogs sniff my car, the situation is quite different.

Wow. You just went from private property to public property. So it's OKAY for a cop to catch you breaking the law on private property but not on public property? It's that backwards from the 4th amendment?

"If I'm driving along and violating no law and the cops set up checkpoints in order to have dogs sniff my car, the situation is quite different."

Interestingly enough, I wonder if you could argue against a police dog search at a checkpoint. If we assume, for a moment, that a checkpoint is not a seizure as such, then this comment by Stevens would seem to go toward making a dog search an infringement. Consider:

"The dog sniff was performed on the exterior of respondent's car while he was lawfully seized for a traffic violation."

Stevens seems to be saying that the search by the dog was ok because it was done while the individual operating the car was lawfully seized. In other words, he's done something wrong and has been seized as part of the policing process. When you're going through a checkpoint, I can see an argument that you're not seized at all because there's no presumption of wrongdoing. (Yes, you and I know the reality is the exact opposite, but this is the BS logic they used to justify a crap decision).