"County welfare officers may conduct routine searches of the homes of welfare recipients to combat fraud under a ruling in a California case that the Supreme Court let stand Monday," reports The Los Angeles Times. According to the report, "The justices refused to hear a challenge from the American Civil Liberties Union, which contended that San Diego County's policy of requiring home searches without a warrant violated privacy rights."

The Associated Press reports, "Firefighters in major cities are being trained to take on a new role as lookouts for terrorism, raising concerns of eroding their standing as trusted American icons and infringing on people's privacy." According to the report, "Unlike police, firefighters and emergency medical personnel need no warrants to enter hundreds of thousands of homes and buildings each year, which puts them in position to spot behavior that could indicate terror activity or planning. There are fears, however, that they could lose the faith of a skeptical public by becoming the eyes of the government, looking for suspicious items like building blueprints or bomb-making manuals or materials."