In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit
____________________
No. 23-1950
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.

CHARLES HOUSE,
Defendant-Appellant.
____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Southern District of Indiana, Indianapolis Division.
No. 1:20-cr-00021-SEB-MJD-1 — Sarah Evans Barker, Judge.
____________________

SUBMITTED SEPTEMBER 4, 2024 — DECIDED NOVEMBER 5, 2024

____________________

Before ROVNER, BRENNAN, and LEE, Circuit Judges.

BRENNAN, Circuit Judge. Three years ago, we held that the
warrantless use of pole cameras to observe a home does not
amount to a “search” under the Fourth Amendment. United
States v. Tuggle, 4 F.4th 505, 511 (7th Cir. 2021). Charles House
asks us to reconsider that decision, even as he recognizes that
no intervening Supreme Court decision requires reevaluation,
and that Tuggle forecloses the issues he raises in this appeal.
We reaffirm Tuggle, as our decision then, as now, rests on
2 No. 23-1950

Supreme Court precedent and is consistent with the rulings

of other federal courts to have considered this issue. The dis-
trict court correctly relied on Tuggle in denying House’s mo-
tion to suppress. We affirm.
I
The facts are undisputed on appeal. House traveled to Cal-
ifornia on several occasions in 2018 and 2019 to obtain large
quantities of marijuana and methamphetamine. He then
shipped the drugs back to addresses associated with him in
Anderson, Indiana. On one such occasion in October 2018,
FedEx personnel contacted law enforcement to alert them to
suspicious packages scheduled for delivery to various loca-
tions in Anderson. 1 Officers arranged to meet with the FedEx
employee delivering the packages to investigate further. They
arrived at a predetermined location with a drug-sniffing dog
and observed twelve packages of various sizes, shapes, and
packaging materials. The dog positively indicated that five of
the twelve packages contained drugs.
Based on the FedEx alert and the dog’s indications, officers
applied for a state warrant authorizing the search of the five
packages. All five packages were sent from the same location
in California and addressed to different places in Anderson,
including across the street from House’s residence. When
opened, two packages contained plastic bags of crystal

1 The record does not explain why FedEx personnel contacted law en-

forcement about House’s packages. A law enforcement officer testified at

trial to reasons why packages may raise concern: (1) extensive taping and
packaging to prevent canine odor identification; (2) return addresses from
known drug origin cities; (3) use of pseudonyms for addressor or ad-
dressee; or (4) delivery to abandoned or incorrect addresses.
No. 23-1950 3

methamphetamine and three contained plastic bags filled

with marijuana. The quantity of marijuana and methamphet-
amine discovered was consistent with an intent to distribute
the drugs, not merely to possess them for personal use.
On January 8, 2019, law enforcement put up a pole camera
pointed at House’s residence and allowed it to continuously
record footage until February 5, 2020. The pole camera cap-
tured only video and could be viewed live or reviewed later.
When watching the recording live, officers could zoom in or
pan out the camera to aid in the investigation. An investigat-
ing officer later testified that he monitored the pole camera
every day during the thirteen months that the camera was op-
erating.
Law enforcement identified several patterns of behavior
on the pole camera footage. For example, when packages ar-
rived across the street from House’s residence, he promptly
picked them up, and the number of visitors to his home im-
mediately increased. This and other patterns served as the ba-
sis for obtaining flight and delivery records that linked House
to those shipments. The pole camera footage also allowed the
government to identify a confidential informant, who agreed
to help establish House’s role in selling drugs.
In a twelve-count indictment, House was ultimately
charged with attempted possession with intent to distribute
methamphetamine and conspiracy to possess with intent to
distribute marijuana, both under 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1) and
846, distribution of marijuana under 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1) and
(b)(1)(D), unlawful use of a communication facility under 21
U.S.C. § 843(b), and possession of a firearm by a convicted
felon under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). House moved to suppress
the pole camera evidence. He acknowledged that Tuggle
4 No. 23-1950

forecloses his motion, but he sought to preserve the claim for

further review. The district court denied House’s motion
based on Tuggle. The jury found House guilty on all counts
and the court sentenced him to 360 months’ imprisonment.
II
House appeals the denial of his motion to suppress. We
review that court’s legal conclusions de novo. United States v.
Ostrum, 99 F.4th 999, 1004 (7th Cir. 2024).
The Fourth Amendment protects “[t]he right of the people
to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects,
against unreasonable searches and seizures.” U.S. CONST.
amend. IV. The Supreme Court has said that the Fourth
Amendment safeguards “the privacy and security of individ-
uals against arbitrary invasions by governmental officials.”
Camara v. San Francisco, 387 U.S. 523, 528 (1967). “Warrantless
searches are per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amend-
ment, subject to only certain exceptions.” United States v. Ki-
zart, 967 F.3d 693, 695 (7th Cir. 2020) (citing Arizona v. Gant,
556 U.S. 332, 338 (2009)). Generally, when the government ob-
tains evidence without a warrant and in violation of an indi-
vidual’s Fourth Amendment rights, the remedy is the sup-
pression of that evidence. United States v. McGill, 8 F.4th 617,
624 (7th Cir. 2021). The government did not seek a search war-
rant here before installing the pole camera and no recognized
exception to the warrant requirement applies.
To determine whether the government conduct here con-
stitutes a “search” within the meaning of the Fourth Amend-
ment, we apply the “privacy-based approach” first articulated
by Justice Harlan in his concurrence in Katz v. United States,
389 U.S. 347, 361 (1967). See United States v. Lewis, 38 F.4th 527,
No. 23-1950 5

534 (2022). We ask first whether the defendant “manifested a

subjective expectation of privacy in the object of the chal-
lenged search,” and second, whether “society [is] willing to
recognize that expectation as reasonable.” California v. Ciraolo,
476 U.S. 207, 211 (1986). Tuggle concluded that a defendant has
no expectation of privacy in the activities in front of and out-
side his house when such activities are readily observable by
any ordinary passerby. Tuggle, 4 F.4th at 516–17. House asks
this court to reconsider this reasoning.
The First Circuit, sitting en banc, deadlocked on this ques-
tion. See United States v. Moore-Bush, 36 F.4th 320, 320 (1st Cir.
2022) (en banc). House relies on a concurrence from that case
to support his position that the prolonged use of warrantless
pole camera surveillance constitutes a search under the
Fourth Amendment. Id. at 320–60. 2
A
We consider first whether the isolated use of a warrantless
pole camera directed at House’s residence violated his Fourth
Amendment rights. The first prong of the Katz inquiry asks
whether a defendant “exhibited an actual (subjective)
expectation of privacy.” Katz, 389 U.S. at 361 (Harlan, J., con-
curring). In Ciraolo, the Supreme Court suggested that a de-
fendant could manifest a subjective expectation of privacy by
erecting a fence around his property. Such “normal precau-
tions” could prevent “casual, accidental observation” from
sidewalk traffic. 476 U.S. at 211–12. Still, the fence in Ciraolo
was insufficient to shield the defendant’s property when

2 Moore-Bush includes two concurrences. Our opinion discusses the

first. The second agrees with the reasoning and conclusions in Tuggle. 36
F.3d at 361–73.
6 No. 23-1950

police took photographs from a low-flying plane. Id. By con-

trast, a defendant who erected a fence around his backyard,
“screening the activity within from the views of casual ob-
servers,” shielded his property from pole camera surveil-
lance. United States v. Cuevas-Sanchez, 821 F.2d 248, 251 (5th
Cir. 1987) (relying on the subjective expectation analysis artic-
ulated in Ciraolo).
House did not express a subjective expectation of privacy
of the kind that Ciraolo recognized as valid for shielding the
activities in the curtilage of a home. The record does not sug-
gest that he tried to shield the front of his residence from the
eyes of ordinary passersby. The lack of fencing in front of
House’s residence eliminates the more difficult question
whether the government could install a camera without a
warrant to surveil over the top of the visual barrier created by
a fence. 3 The pole camera surveillance here gave law enforce-
ment no greater access to House’s residence than would be
available to any observer on the sidewalk.
The subjective prong of the Katz inquiry does not end the
analysis. The objective question asks whether House has an
expectation of privacy that society is prepared to consider rea-
sonable.
“’At the very core’ of the Fourth Amendment ‘stands the
right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free
from unreasonable governmental intrusion.’” Kyllo v. United
States, 533 U.S. 27, 31 (2001) (quoting Silverman v. United States,

3 At trial, an officer testified that the pole camera pointed at the front
of House’s residence did not allow investigators to see past the privacy
fence surrounding House’s backyard. No evidence was provided at trial
about activities occurring in House’s backyard.
No. 23-1950 7

365 U.S. 505, 511 (1961)). This court has explained this “expec-
tation of privacy does not extend to ‘[w]hat a person know-
ingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office.’”
United States v. Thompson, 811 F.3d 944, 949 (7th Cir. 2016)
(quoting Katz, 389 U.S. at 351). The Supreme Court has also
clarified that the “Fourth Amendment protection of the home
has never been extended to require law enforcement officers
to shield their eyes when passing by a home on public thor-
oughfares.” Ciraolo, 476 U.S. at 213; Kyllo, 533 U.S. at 32
(“[V]isual observation is no ‘search’ at all.”). Twice this court
has decided that a person has “no reasonable expectation of
privacy in the driveway and gravel walkways” near his home.
United States v. French, 291 F.3d 945, 955 (7th Cir. 2002); United
States v. Evans, 27 F.3d 1219, 1228 (7th Cir. 1994).
House knowingly exposed the outside of his residence to
the public. He cannot then articulate an expectation of privacy
in the front of his residence that society would be willing to
recognize as reasonable. Law enforcement officers were not
obligated to “shield their eyes” or turn off their cameras when
observing from public thoroughfares the activities taking
place in the front of House’s residence.
Notably, Tuggle rejected the argument that a technology is
valid as long as the government “could theoretically accom-
plish the same surveillance—no matter how laborious—
through some nontechnological means.” 4 F.4th at 526. It fol-
lows, House submits, that the intrusion into personal privacy
caused by the use of a pole camera is unconstitutional, even if
visual or physical surveillance remains a valid police practice.
The question then is whether a pole camera falls within the
class of technologies that are invalid under the Fourth
Amendment absent a valid search warrant. The prototypical
8 No. 23-1950

example of constitutionally impermissible technology is a

thermal imaging device that can scan inside a suspect’s home
while the officer remains outside. See Kyllo, 533 U.S. at 30. The
Court held that the use of “a device that is not in general pub-
lic use, to explore details of the home that would previously
have been unknowable without physical intrusion” amounts
to a Fourth Amendment search “and is presumptively unrea-
sonable without a warrant.” Id. at 40.
In contrast, law enforcement’s use of cameras to assist in-
vestigations has been repeatedly approved. In Dow Chemical
Co. v. United States, the Court held that taking aerial photo-
graphs of an industrial plant complex from navigable
airspace did not constitute a search under the Fourth Amend-
ment. 476 U.S. 227, 239 (1986). The Court similarly held that a
Fourth Amendment search did not occur when law enforce-
ment observed and photographed a suspect’s marijuana
plants from a low-flying plane. See Ciraolo, 476 U.S. at 209–10.
Observation from “public navigable airspace” and “in a phys-
ically nonintrusive manner” was not the type of unreasonable
observation that society is prepared to accept, the Court ex-
plained. Id. at 213. In Tuggle we decided that the government’s
use of cameras to observe the exteriors of private homes is
constitutional. 4 F.4th at 516 (“Now more than ever, cameras
are ubiquitous, found in the hands and pockets of virtually all
Americans, on the doorbells and entrances of homes, and on
the walls and ceilings of businesses.”). Like the cameras in
Dow Chemical and Ciraolo, the pole camera here (as in Tuggle)
is a technology in general public use that does not offend the
Fourth Amendment. Kyllo, 533 U.S. at 40.
We reiterate our holding in Tuggle: the government does
not invade an expectation of privacy that society is prepared
No. 23-1950 9

to accept as reasonable when the government uses a common

technology, located where officers are lawfully entitled to be,
and captures events observable to passersby. The isolated use
of a pole camera does not amount to a Fourth Amendment
search. 4 F.4th at 516–17.
B
While House does not take issue with the isolated use of
pole camera surveillance, he argues that the prolonged use of
a warrantless pole camera constitutes a Fourth Amendment
search. See Appellant’s Br. at 12 (“[O]ne has no reasonable ex-
pectation of privacy in the discrete moments of intimacy that
may occur in the front of one’s home …, [but] it does not fol-
low that the same is true with respect to an aggregation of
those moments over many months.”) (quoting Moore-Bush, 36
F.4th at 336) (Appellant’s emphases).
This case is not the vehicle to challenge the duration of the
surveillance of House’s residence. Warrantless pole cameras
surveilled Tuggle’s residence for eighteen months, 4 F.4th at
510; House’s residence was surveilled with a pole camera for
thirteen months. Even if the duration of warrantless surveil-
lance may be otherwise relevant, a challenge to the shorter
surveillance here is foreclosed by Tuggle.
Still, House’s central argument against the sustained use
of pole cameras would invalidate the practice here and in Tug-
gle. He contends that if this court applies the “mosaic the-
ory”—the idea that the “government can learn more from a
given slice of information if it can put that information in the
context of a broader pattern, a mosaic”—we will conclude
that the warrantless and prolonged use of pole camera sur-
veillance is unconstitutional. See Matthew B. Kugler & Lior
10 No. 23-1950

Jacob Strahilevitz, Actual Expectations of Privacy, Fourth Amend-

ment Doctrine, and the Mosaic Theory, 2015 SUP. CT. REV. 205,
205 (2015).
First articulated in United States v. Maynard, 615 F.3d 544,
562 (D.C. Cir. 2010), the mosaic theory has been discussed but
not adopted by the Supreme Court. See United States v. Jones,
565 U.S. 400, 416 (2012); Riley v. California, 573 U.S. 373, 394
(2014); and Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S. 296, 311 (2018).
The theory examines the government’s method of investiga-
tion and asks “whether a set of nonsearches aggregated
together amount to a search because their collection and sub-
sequent analysis creates a revealing mosaic.” Orin S. Kerr, The
Mosaic Theory of the Fourth Amendment, 111 MICH. L. REV. 311,
320 (2012). Put another way, while isolated pole camera sur-
veillance would not offend the Fourth Amendment under the
mosaic theory, surveillance that captures enough information
to create a comprehensive account of a suspect’s movements
could. How much information would be enough to create a
Fourth Amendment violation under the theory presents “an
obvious line-drawing problem.” Tuggle, 4 F.4th at 526.
When confronting this same question on similar facts in
Tuggle, we declined to apply the mosaic theory because the
Supreme Court had not directed lower courts to do so. Id. at
519–20. In Tuggle this court reasoned that even if the theory
applied, the result would be the same. The footage obtained
from the pole cameras “did not paint the type of exhaustive
picture of [Tuggle’s] every movement” that the Supreme
Court said violates the Fourth Amendment in other contexts.
Id. at 524 (citing Jones, 565 U.S. at 415; Carpenter, 585 U.S. at
310–11).
No. 23-1950 11

House asks this court to reconsider this reasoning in light

of the first concurrence in Moore-Bush from the First Circuit.
36 F.4th at 320–60. That opinion criticized the treatment of the
mosaic theory in Tuggle on two grounds. First, it pressed for
the application of the mosaic theory, as lower courts need not
wait for the Supreme Court to apply a theoretical framework.
Moore-Bush, 36 F.4th at 358. Second, it said Tuggle misread Car-
penter, disregarding evidence that the Supreme Court “did
embrace something akin to the mosaic theory.” Id.
But the Supreme Court has not adopted the mosaic theory,
even if some of the justices in various opinions in Carpenter,
Jones, and Riley discussed it. Jones, for example, considered
whether the installation of a GPS tracking device on a defend-
ant’s vehicle constituted a search under the Fourth Amend-
ment. 565 U.S. at 404. While the majority declined to rely on
the mosaic theory, the Court held that the government had
trespassed on private property when it attached a GPS device
to the defendant’s vehicle without a warrant. Id. at 404–07. In
separate concurrences, Justice Alito and Justice Sotomayor
embraced the logic of the mosaic theory. But references to that
theory in concurrences is not a holding. The Court has never
adopted the mosaic theory and has not bound lower courts to
apply it.
The first concurrence from Moore-Bush conceded that the
Supreme Court did not command application of the mosaic
theory. Rather, it saw “no reason why lower courts must …
await controlling word from the Supreme Court before find-
ing the Constitution to be protective.” Moore-Bush, 36 F.4th at
358. We disagree with that concurrence’s premise that pro-
longed pole camera surveillance violates the Constitution. It
does not convince us otherwise, and nothing else has changed
12 No. 23-1950

in the legal landscape since Tuggle to persuade us that the mo-

saic theory applies here.
Nor are we persuaded by the First Circuit’s attempt to
analogize pole camera surveillance to the technology em-
ployed in Carpenter. As we reasoned in Tuggle, pole camera
surveillance lacks the all-encompassing and retrospective ca-
pabilities of the technologies at issue in Carpenter, Jones, and
Riley that made them unconstitutional surveillance methods
under the Fourth Amendment. In Carpenter, the Court consid-
ered whether the government conducted a search when it ac-
cessed historical cell-site location information (“CSLI”), a
time-stamped record generated every time that a cell phone
connects to a cell site. 585 U.S. at 302. The precision of the rec-
ords generated “depends on the size of the geographic area
covered by the cell site,” which has steadily become more
granular to satisfy demand generated by increased cell phone
usage. Id. at 301. As people commonly carry their cell phones
wherever they go, the wireless carriers “chronicle a person’s
past movements through the record of his cell phone signals.”
Id. at 309. The Court in Carpenter held that the government’s
ability to access historic records that trace a defendant’s
whereabouts for a period of seven days constituted a violation
of the Fourth Amendment. The Court explained that the in-
vestigative technology violated the defendant’s reasonable
expectation of privacy because it “provide[d] an all-encom-
passing record of the holder’s whereabouts” that revealed
“not only his particular movements, but through them his ‘fa-
milial, political, professional, religious, and sexual associa-
tions.’” Id. at 311 (citing Jones, 565 U.S. at 415) (Sotomayor, J.,
concurring).
No. 23-1950 13

Tuggle distinguished pole camera surveillance from CSLI

technology. “[S]tationary cameras placed around Tuggle’s
house captured an important sliver of Tuggle’s life,” but not
the full record of his whereabouts that could be gleaned from
CSLI. Tuggle, 4 F.4th at 524. Unlike CSLI, the pole camera “ex-
posed no details about where Tuggle traveled, what busi-
nesses he frequented, with whom he interacted in public, or
whose homes he visited, among many other intimate details
of his life.” Id.
Pole cameras also differ from surveillance technologies
that have retrospective capabilities. See Tuggle, 4 F.4th at 525.
In Riley and Carpenter, the Supreme Court said the retrospec-
tive quality of surveillance techniques was relevant to finding
a Fourth Amendment violation. In Riley, the Court considered
whether the government’s search of the contents of a defend-
ant’s cell phone without a warrant was unlawful. See Riley,
573 U.S. at 379. The Court ruled that the warrantless search of
a cell phone violated the Fourth Amendment because it gave
the government access to “a digital record of nearly every
aspect of [defendants’] lives—from the mundane to the inti-
mate.” Id. at 395. Unbridled access to cell phone data permit-
ting “the police to scrutinize such records on a routine basis
is quite different from allowing them to search a personal item
or two in the occasional case.” Id. In dicta, the Court noted
that cell phones had the capacity to provide historic location
information that could “reconstruct someone’s specific move-
ments down to the minute, not only around town but also
within a particular building.” Id. at 396.
At issue in Carpenter was the constitutionality of searching
historic location information. There, the Court explained the
“retrospective quality” of CSLI data provided the
14 No. 23-1950

government “access to a category of information otherwise

unknowable.” Carpenter, 585 U.S. at 312. This kind of infor-
mation, the Court observed, would allow the government to
go back in time to surveil a suspect’s activities before he was
ever suspected in the first place. See id. CSLI data thus contra-
vened the defendant’s reasonable expectation of privacy
when it allowed the government to “travel back in time to re-
trace a person’s whereabouts” for up to five years of logged
data from the wireless carrier. Id.
Shortly after Carpenter, this court suggested the retrospec-
tive quality of surveillance data played a key role in the Su-
preme Court’s analysis. See United States v. Hammond, 996 F.3d
374, 382 (7th Cir. 2021). “The ‘narrow’ Carpenter decision did
not determine whether the collection of real-time CSLI” in-
volving individuals on public roadways, which was at issue
in Hammond, posed a Fourth Amendment problem. Id. at 387.
Unlike historic CSLI, obtaining real-time CSLI data in such in-
stances was an acceptable surveillance method. Id. at 383. Sim-
ilarly, we emphasized in Tuggle the “prospective and nonhis-
torical” nature of pole camera surveillance. Tuggle, 4 F.4th at
525. Unlike technologies that permit retrospective surveil-
lance, pole cameras captured real-time video footage and so
did not present difficult questions about conducting surveil-
lance into the past. Id.
But the first concurrence in Moore-Bush sees it differently.
That opinion disagrees with Tuggle that the retrospective na-
ture of the information in Carpenter is dispositive. See Moore-
Bush, 36 F.4th at 348 (“[W]e do not understand Carpenter to
suggest that the creation of a searchable digital record that
perfectly accounts for the whole of the movements of a person
over a long period of time contravenes a reasonable
No. 23-1950 15

expectation of privacy—and thereby effects a search—only

when that record was created before the government wished
to have it.”). Instead, that concurrence declares there is a sub-
stantial similarity between CSLI and prolonged pole camera
surveillance in that both allow the government “’to travel
back in time’ with little expense … and to do so ‘effortlessly’”
to witness a defendant’s activities with “perfect precision.” Id.
at 349 (citation to Carpenter omitted).
This critique of Tuggle misconstrues how law enforcement
officers initiate the use of and maintain surveillance with pole
cameras. Pole camera surveillance does not permit law
enforcement to travel back in time to retrace a suspect’s
whereabouts or actions. A critical feature of pole camera sur-
veillance is that the “government ha[s] to decide ex ante to col-
lect the video footage by installing the cameras.” Tuggle, 4 F.
4th at 525. “The government did not tap into an expansive,
pre-existing database of video footage of Tuggle’s home akin
to the Internet browsing history and extensive photos stored
on cell phones considered in Riley, or the expansive CSLI in
Carpenter.” Id. In fact, the Court in Carpenter explicitly clarified
it did not “call into question conventional surveillance tech-
niques and tools.” 585 U.S. at 316. Pole camera surveillance is
a conventional surveillance technique that enhances observa-
tions law enforcement could make by, for example, monitor-
ing a suspect’s movements in public during a stakeout. The
observation of House’s residence during the investigation of
his drug-related crimes conformed to this prospective and
nonhistorical approach. Pole camera surveillance of House’s
residence began only after he was suspected of drug dealing.
It lasted thirteen months and only captured House’s move-
ments in public, which would otherwise be visible to law en-
forcement if they had conducted a stakeout.
16 No. 23-1950

The first concurrence in Moore-Bush also concludes that a

suspect’s expectation of privacy becomes sacrosanct when the
surveillance occurs in front of the suspect’s home. See 36 F.4th
at 335. The curtilage is “’intimately linked to the home, both
physically and psychologically,’ which matters precisely be-
cause the home is ‘where privacy expectations are most
heightened.’” Id. (quoting Ciraolo, 476 U.S. at 213). Thus, “the
claimed expectation of privacy here is not fairly characterized
as inhering in a mere ‘sliver’ of a person’s publicly visible
life.” Id. at 337 (internal citation to Tuggle omitted). Instead,
the prolonged exposure of all visible activities in front of the
home—“by revealing patterns of movements and visits over
time”—provides a comprehensive vision into a suspect’s life.
Id. at 336.
But as already discussed, a person’s expectation of privacy
does not extend to the things he knowingly exposes to the
public. See Thompson, 811 F.3d at 949. The Katz analysis does
not become more onerous when the place being surveilled is
the curtilage of a suspect’s home. See 389 U.S. at 351 (“[T]he
Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a per-
son knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home
or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection.”).
The mosaic theory does not alter the reasoning as to the
surveillance of a home’s curtilage. Tuggle rejected this argu-
ment: “[i]n one sense, the recordings painted a whole picture
of the happenings outside Tuggle’s front door by recording
nonstop for eighteen months. … In another important sense,
however, the footage only depicted one small part of a much
larger whole.” 4 F.4th at 524. Law enforcement’s surveillance
of a home’s curtilage, which is knowingly exposed to the pub-
lic, does not offend a suspect’s reasonable expectation of
No. 23-1950 17

privacy. And the extended nature of this surveillance does not

transform it into a violation. Because House had no reasona-
ble expectation of privacy in the curtilage of his home, an area
readily visible to ordinary passersby, his Fourth Amendment
rights were not violated.
C
Our reasoning here, as in Tuggle, is consistent with that of
most federal appellate courts to have addressed the constitu-
tionality of warrantless pole camera surveillance. Before Tug-
gle, courts said that this type of investigation technique was
not a search. See United States v. May-Shaw, 955 F.3d 563, 564–
65 (6th Cir. 2020) (finding no violation in the surveillance of
the defendant’s carport outside his apartment); United States
v. Bucci, 582 F.3d 108, 116–17 (1st Cir. 2009) (finding no viola-
tion in an eight-month long surveillance through a pole cam-
era across the street from the defendant’s residence). After
Tuggle, with the exception of the First Circuit in Moore-Bush,
each federal appellate court that has confronted the issue has
agreed with this reasoning. See United States v. Dennis, 41 F.4th
732, 741 (5th Cir. 2022) (finding no violation in the surveil-
lance of the front and back of Dennis’ house because “areas
open to view of the public without any invasion of the prop-
erty itself is not alone a violation”); United States v. Hay, 95
F.4th 1304, 1314 (10th Cir. 2024) (finding no violation in the
installation of a pole camera directed at the front of Hay’s
house).
III
We reaffirm our reasoning and holding in Tuggle that law
enforcement’s warrantless use of a pole camera to observe a
home on a short- or long-term basis does not amount to a
18 No. 23-1950

search under the Fourth Amendment. Our decision, then as

now, is grounded in Supreme Court and circuit precedent.
House does not present any reasons to reconsider Tuggle. And
all but one of the federal appellate courts to resolve the same
issue have come out the same way. For these reasons, we
AFFIRM the district court’s denial of House’s motion to sup-
press.
No. 23-1950 19

ROVNER, Circuit Judge, concurring. As the majority points

out, our court has deemed that the use of a pole camera, even
for an extended period, does not constitute a search. United
States v. Tuggle, 4 F.4th 505, 511 (7th Cir. 2021), cert. denied, 142
S. Ct. 1107 (2022). Thus, even if this court were to reverse this
holding based on the rapidly expanding power of video sur-
veillance teamed with the exponentially growing abilities of
artificial intelligence, under the “good faith” exception to the
Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement, the government
was unquestionably entitled to rely on Tuggle. See Davis v.
United States, 564 U.S. 229, 238–41 (2011). For these reasons I
agree with the conclusions of the majority opinion.
Nevertheless, I, like the three concurring judges in United
States v. Moore-Bush (first concurrence), would conclude that
developments in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence along
with developments in technology would support the overrul-
ing of our precedent in Tuggle. See United States v. Moore-Bush,
36 F.4th 320 (1st Cir. 2022) (Barron, CJ. concurring), cert. denied
sub nom. Moore v. United States, 143 S. Ct. 2494 (2023). As those
concurring judges said,
Mindful of the brave new world that the rou-
tine use of such all-encompassing, long-term
video surveillance of the front curtilage of a
home could bring about, we are convinced
that the government does conduct a search
within the meaning of the Fourth Amend-
ment when it accesses the record that it cre-
ates through surveillance of that kind and
thus that law enforcement, in doing so, must
comply with that Amendment’s limitations.
Id. at 322.
20 No. 23-1950

Whatever the Supreme Court and this court have said

about a reasonable person’s expectation of privacy in the sit-
uation where officers watch one discrete activity viewed at
one particular time, the analysis is unquestionably different
when the police observe every movement, activity, and asso-
ciation over the course of one month at one of the more inti-
mate and protected of locations—the curtilage of one’s home.
Id. at 327. And as the power and scope of technology in-
creases, courts will need to reckon with how these new tech-
nologies change citizens’ expectations of privacy in a world
where pole camera video can scan and identify faces, read li-
cense plates, zoom in on what a person is doing on their
phone, and compare actions and activities across various pub-
lic surveillance systems.
Today our decision in Tuggle resolves this case, but I write
separately to note that this court and others will have to re-
consider those holdings as the capabilities of technology
change our understanding of what constitutes a reasonable
expectation of privacy.