Expectation of privacy or INVASION of privacy?

[timor]

If you live on the ground floor of an apartment building which is ten feet from the street, and you keep your curtains open, can you reasonably have an expectation of privacy?

This is the correct question. It's a good one. You would like to believe that being in your home you have an expectation of privacy, but if your keep the curtains open, do you really have that expectation?

Let's change the facts. Let's say you have curtains but they are pulled shut to within 1" of each other so that in order to see into the room, you'd have to get up on the person's lawn right next to the house and peek through the 1" opening. Does that change the analysis?

Take it one step further -- let's say you have the curtains pulled 100% closed so there is no gap at all, but you only have sheers and not black out curtains. Assume further that you can see through the sheers if you get close enough, but from the street you cannot see through the sheers. How does that change the analysis?

What if you have black out curtains and they are pulled 100% closed so you cannot see into the room. Assume further that you have a baby monitor in that room, and somebody who sits out front of your house with a laptop computer can access that video stream. Reasonable expectation of privacy because the curtains were closed?

Query: Where does a "reasonable expectation of privacy" end?

This is exactly splitting the hair in four. It's something else to trespass, something else to see things visible from public space. The monitor thing ? Why do we have the signal scramblers ? Is this not for protection ?
The question is not : Where does a "reasonable expectation of privacy" end? but where it starts.

 

[jwbryson1]

The question is not : Where does a "reasonable expectation of privacy" end? but where it starts.

I'd say the exact same spot.

 

[timor]

The question is not : Where does a "reasonable expectation of privacy" end? but where it starts.

I'd say the exact same spot.

I think you are right. I am just looking from the point of active protection and as I understand you and the others, you are rather more on the "just expecting" side.