Barry Cooper was DEA, I bet he has used and understood the workings of FLIR in a more effective way than you or I ever will. He is targeting these bent pigs in a war against FLIR. Well done that man.
FLIR is a passive system... it has no emmisions. its a freakin camera designed to to make normally invisible wavelengths in the infrared spectrum visible to the human eye... the shits been on the market since ww2... relatively primitive infrared systems dating up to the vietnam era used an infrared spotlight to 'illuminate' a selected target, however it was quickly discovered that anyone with another infrared scope could see the spotlight, projecting a direct line from the target to the targeter.. bad business for mr forward observer... so the system was revamped as a totally passive system in the late 60's and was suspected to be first used on U2 spyplanes overflying the soviet union.
in the late 70's FLIR, as a brand name was formed using the new Forward Looking InfraRed technology, a vast improvement over older designs based on sidesweep technology primarily used in satellites and military aircraft, mainly being the difference was that with FLIR, you could point the camera AT a location and capture an image in real time; with sidesweep infrared one had to move the camera across the field of view, as it recorded only a 1 dimensional image, then this image had to be processed into one that we could actually use, typically that meant a large computer and alot of time.
Its a fancy camera guys... thats it. and heres a jewel for you:
In 2001, the
United States Supreme Court decided that performing FLIR surveillance of private property without a
search warrant by law enforcement violates the
Fourth Amendment's protection from unreasonable searches and seizures.
Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001)
[2]
so the moral of the story is dont do anything dumb to give them reason to obtain a warrant.....
and the case that set that precedent should be known to ALL growers... read up on it, ill even give you a link cuz my rep says im just really nice
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyllo_v._United_States