The Canadian Supreme Court has ruled that using drug-sniffing dogs in public places is a violation of privacy rights, the CanWest News Service reported April 25.

"No doubt, ordinary businessmen and businesswomen, riding along on public transit, or going up and down on elevators in office towers, will be outraged at any suggestion that the content of their briefcases could be randomly inspected by the police without any 'reasonable suspicion' of illegality," said the Canadian high court, which voted 6-3 to ban such searches.

CanWest reported April 24 that random searches of Canadian schools, airports, train stations, and other public places using specially trained dogs to sniff out drugs is common. "This has far-reaching implications way past schools," said Paul Wubben, director of education for the St. Clair Catholic District School Board in Ontario, which uses dogs to search for drugs.

In one of two cases before the high court, St. Patrick's High School in Sarnia, Ont., issued a standing invitation to police to search the school for drugs, even though police were not acting on a tip about possible drug use, had no reason to believe student safety was threatened, and did not have a search warrant. During the two-hour search, a drug dog detected marijuana, hallucinogenic mushrooms, and drug paraphernalia in a 17-year-old student's backpack. The student was charged with drug offenses, but a pair of lower courts threw out the case, saying the student's privacy rights had been violated.

The Canadian government said that the case should have stood because the dog was just sniffing the public air, not conducting a search, and that by alerting police to the backpack gave them reasonable suspicion to search the student property. "A dog sniff alone is not a search," the Ontario attorney general said. "It only supplies information that may lead to one."