Guess what, folks? If you have a wireless router, a cordless phone, remote car-door opener, baby monitor or cellphone in your house, the FCC claims the right to enter your home without a warrant at any time of the day or night in order to inspect it.
Those are the rules the renegade agency has followed for years to monitor licensed television and radio stations, and to crack down on pirate radio broadcasters. And the commission maintains the same policy applies to any licensed or unlicensed radio-frequency (RF) device.
“Anything using RF energy — we have the right to inspect it to make sure it is not causing interference,” says FCC spokesman David Fiske. That includes devices like Wi-Fi routers, Fiske says. George Washington University professor Orin Kerr, a constitutional law expert, questions the legality of the policy.
“The Supreme Court has said that the government can’t make warrantless entries into homes for administrative inspections,” Kerr told Wired.com, referring to a 1967 Supreme Court ruling that housing inspectors needed warrants to force their way into private residences.
But that isn't stopping the FCC-- they slapped a whopping $7,000 fine on a Corpus Christi, Texas man in 2007 when he refused an FCC agent entry to search his home. And the man had reason to refuse entry-- the Supreme Court has also ruled that anything found in an illegal (warrantless) search can be used against you. So damned if you do, damned if you don't-- I guess that's the America we inherited from Bush and Cheney.
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