Police mounted a PTZ on a pole for more than a month across the street from the house of a man (Leonel Vargas) suspected of drug trafficking. They did this without a warrant.
For the first month they didn’t see anything interesting that would help nail him. Their break came when they observed Vargas shooting a gun at beer bottles in his yard. They used this to get a warrant to enter his house where they found drugs and guns and then filed formal charges against him.
Vargas argued that the footage of him shooting the gun, the reason for the warrant in the first place, should be thrown out because the camera faced his yard and the door of his house, which is usually afforded the same protection as the inside of a house, however the government argued that he had no expectation of privacy in the front of his house. The EFF has submitted a brief in the case arguing that prolonged warrantless surveillance violates the fourth amendment.
Here is one of the images they were able to capture from across the street: