Is it possible for there to be no reasonable expectation of privacy in one&#39;s own home (bought , not rented)? In privacy invasion torts, the act of privacy invasion needs to be carried out in a place where the victim has a reasonable expectation of privacy, and it's often said by people that privacy invasion by someone outside one's house would always be a violation of law. Is this true ?
The assessment of a reasonable expectation of privacy is based on the totality of the circumstances. This applies in both the context of unreasonable searches and in the context of the tort of invasion of privacy. See generally: Heckert v. 5470 Investments Ltd., 2008 BCSC 1298 at para. 81-82 (a lower court decision, but summarizing Canada Supreme Court jurisprudence). One might have a reasonable expectation of privacy at a restaurant and one might not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in a personal residence. When an insurance company was conducting surveillance from the street into a home via open windows, it was found in those circumstances that the privacy interest was low: Although her expectation of privacy may legitimately be higher while in her house, on the night in question the blinds were open and the lights were on. Therefore, anyone could have seen her helping her daughter while just passing by the house. Further, Ms. Milner ought to have reasonably known that Manulife was investigating her claim and that it was possible that video surveillance would be used. Thus, her entitlement to privacy on the evening in question was low. Milner v Manufacturers Life Insurance Company, 2005 BCSC 1661 (CanLII), at para 83, https://canlii.ca/t/1m4qx#par83, retrieved on 2023-04-12 On the other hand, when a neighbor installed cameras angled so as to capture surveillance of the interior of another neighbor's home, the surveilled neighbor had a high privacy interest: the Halls ... did, at all times, have a reasonable expectation of privacy when inside their own home. Unlike, the investigator in the Milner case, the dispute with Mr. Wasserman did not entitle him to any information that might be obtained as a result of surveillance of activities inside the Hall residence. Accordingly, the Halls’ expectation of privacy inside their home was very high throughout the entirety of the dispute. Wasserman v. Hall, 2009 BCSC 1318 (CanLII), at para 77, https://canlii.ca/t/25tgf#par77, retrieved on 2023-04-12
There are two separate questions here, it seems to me. First: are law enforcement officers required to respect your house rules and avoid making a mess? At least in the United States, the answer is unequivocally no. If the only "damage" suffered is that you need to sweep the floor, or put your clothes back in drawers, that's not the police's problem. You have not suffered any damages that a court is going to reimburse, and your best case scenario, even if you win a suit against the police, is an award of one dollar as nominal damages. Second: are law enforcement officers required to reimburse you for any physical damage they caused while executing the search warrant? The answer here is tricker, and depends on the search warrant. If the warrant is invalid, then the answer is yes. But remember: just because, for example, the cops are looking for the guy you bought your house from, who moved out a month ago, that doesn't mean the warrant is "invalid." Just because the cops got a bad tip, or suspected you wrongly, or were in some other way wasting their time--as long as the warrant is technically proper and they were able to convince a judge it was reasonable, the warrant is valid. Even if the warrant is invalid, you may need to sue the police to get anything reimbursed. If the warrant is valid, in practical terms, you will almost certainly need to sue the police to recover anything, and you will have to show the Court that the police's actions that damaged your property were so extreme that they were outside the reasonable scope of the warrant. For instance: the warrant is for a large item, like a stolen car: the police cannot smash holes in your walls to make sure the car isn't hidden inside. If they're looking for drugs, they may be able to. If the officers' actions are consistent with the scope of the warrant, then you are not going to recover anything. The warrant is, basically, permission from a judge to enter your home and perform those actions, and they will not be liable for them. A number of relevant cases are discussed in this article: http://www.aele.org/law/2010all01/2010-1MLJ101.pdf
I'm based in England, but I'm sure the principle is similar in Canada. The night club or concert venue is private property. When someone owns or rents private property one of the main things they are buying is the right to control who is present on that property, and generally they can use reasonable force to remove people who are not authorised. Security guards generally act as agents for a property owner, tenant or similar.
You must comply with the law even on your own property Things like handrails and fencing of potential falls are almost always subject to local building codes. &quot;[S]ome netting&quot; is unlikely to be compliant except as a temporary measure. In addition, materially changing the functionality so that it becomes less safe, even if it complies, may expose you to liability if someone gets injured. Such as if the new handrail is replacing one which had measures to prevent someone from slipping under them. Harassment I'm unfamiliar with Swiss harassment laws but they usually require unwanted behaviour that offends, humiliates, intimidates, or creates a hostile environment and must usually be directed at a protected characteristic. Offending someone because you don't like them is fine; offending them because they are a woman is not. A neighbour raising concerns with you, your contractors, or the authorities is not harassment. Nor is exercising his legal right to bring a lawsuit. If it persists beyond what is reasonable it may cross over into stalking, but that's not harassment either.
My friend should have taken his property with him, but presumably the host can't just keep it, especially after reaching out to them? Correct. However, the host does not have to do anything to facilitate its return i.e. they don’t have to post it to you. So long as they keep it for your friend to collect and don’t appropriate it for their own use, they are not breaking the law. If they do appropriate it, that is called theft or its tort equivalent, conversion. As my contract was with Airbnb and the host works from them, is there any responsibility on their part, e.g. Could I hypothetically open a small claims case against them? Or would any small claims case be directly against the host themselves? This is not true. You and the host each have a contract with Airbnb for the use of the platform. The contract for the accommodation is between you two and doesn’t involve Airbnb at all. In any event, there is no contractural issue here.
Would any offence be committed for: Having this on your person? Buying or selling this? Leaving it around for people to plug in to a computer? In the abstract, I don't think that this conduct would violate either Section 36 of the U.K. law or U.S. law, although, obviously, purposefully destroying a computer itself (i.e. actually using the device without the consent of the owner of the computer) would violate many U.K. laws and would also violate many U.S. laws at both the state and federal level. I also don't think that possession or buying or selling this product would be a crime absent some intent that it be used illegally, in which case there might be an "attempt" to commit a crime offense, or an offense that would make one part of a conspiracy to commit a crime. In the "leaving it around" example, there is arguably an intent to use it to harm another improperly, although the phrasing is ambivalent. While many statutes in the U.S. criminalize possession of burglary tools, or drug paraphernalia, sometimes with an associated intent element (although even these crimes often have an express or judicially implied intent to use element), I'm not aware of any statute that criminalize possession of tools for malicious destruction of property. So, if the tools aren't possessed or used in a manner intended as a step in the facilitation of a crime, I don't think that any law is violated. So far as I know, the U.S. does not have a counterpart to Section 37 of the British statute cited above (it isn't a terribly easy thing to search for to definitively rule out the existence of such a law because federal law has many uncodified crimes in unexpected statutes and there are many sets of state criminal statutes, not all of which are codified either). The example giving in the comments by @gnasher729 of possession of a hammer which could be used to do the same things that this object could be used to do is instructive. Arguably, this USB-like tool is more specifically targeted at malicious conduct. But, for example, when I used to work as a radio news reporter, we had a machine that was basically a high powered magnet that was specifically designed to destroy all information on magnetic media. This was, in part, so that it could be reused, but it was also so that confidential interviews wouldn't fall into the wrong hands once they were no longer needed, in much the way that one might shred paper documents. It isn't so implausible to think that a device like this one might be necessary for individuals or firms with national defense secrets embedded in their hardware and software to have on hand in order to destroy a sensitive computer in order to prevent a security breach, if necessary. In a case like that, leaving one of these devices around the office unlabeled might be negligent, but wouldn't have the intent necessary to be an intended crime. And, it is hard to imagine that the device itself, which seems pretty simple, would itself involve any technology that is a national security secret, so it probably wouldn't violate export control laws. Of course, possession, purchase or sale of such a specialized device, or leaving it around unlabeled would certainly be powerful evidence of an intent to use the device in a wrongful manner, and hence, of an attempt to commit a crime. Indeed, possession of such a device or purchase of one might very well be sufficient to establish probable cause to seize the device and arrest the person holding it on charges of an attempt to destroy a computer. But, this device would be merely powerful evidence of an intent to commit a crime, rather than something that is a crime to commit in and of itself. There are no international laws that govern this kind of thing. The only international laws applicable to individuals pertain to war crimes and nuclear and chemical weapons. Even then, most international laws direct member nations to adopt domestic laws on the subject rather than being self-executing.
It turns out that there is no difference between the ethical answer and the legal answer, in this case. The law recognizes the property right which a person has when they create a thing, such as a font, and that right is encoded in the law of copyright. The relevant US federal code is contained in Title 17, which you can read (essentially identical laws exist in virtually or perhaps actually all countries). The important thing to understand is that there is not a distinction between "privately" trespassing on a person's property and "publicly" trespassing on a person's property. The violation of the owner's property rights comes from taking the material without consent. There is a legally-recognized exception to the owner's rights, in the form of "fair use", which is widely misunderstood to mean "if it's not for profit, the property owner has no legal protection". Simply taking and using someone else's IP non-commercially is not "fair use".
No it is not legal; it is trespassing. the common law definition of trespassing is to enter someone's land or property without their permission. By locking the door they have denied permission to everyone except those to whom they have given a key. If someone finds a key that happens to fit the lock, there is no longer a physical restriction but as they do not have permission, the legal restriction is still in force.