Supreme Court rules: Warrant needed for GPS tracking Ruling overturns drug conspiracy conviction which included GPS tracking as evidence
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court says police must get a search warrant before using GPS technology to track criminal suspects.
The court ruled in the case of Washington, D.C., nightclub owner Antoine Jones. A federal appeals court in Washington overturned his drug conspiracy conviction because police did not have a warrant when they installed a GPS device on his vehicle and then tracked his movements for a month.
The GPS device helped authorities link Jones to a suburban house used to stash money and drugs. He was sentenced to life in prison before the appeals court overturned the conviction. The Supreme Court agreed with the appeals court.
I have to agree with the Supremes here. A tracking device is very close to an electronic bug.
Then again, would you need a warrant to follow a suspect's car? All the tracking device does is tell where the possible perp is going.
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
But - if they are following the vehicle, the operator has a reasonable chance of knowing he's being followed. Additionally, it takes police time to do so, placing a GPS device and then capturing where it has been takes less man hours and the suspect isn't likely aware.
Grady wrote: I wonder if it is legal to track someone by their smart phone GPS or by following the towers the cell phone hits.
I'd imagine a warrant is needed for the cell phone records already.
Warrants seem like a good double check to avoid the abuse of the technology. It's not like they can't use GPS tracking, they just have to ask first.
I do wish the decision would apply from here on out rather than releasing the guy already convicted though. Seems like they could look at the information available at the time the GPS was placed, and if it was enough for a resonable judge to grant a warrant it should be admissible.
"Whatever you are, be a good one." ~ Abraham Lincoln
Since the smart-phone triangulation/GPS location is basically the same techique, I would hope this gets expanded to cover that surveillance as well. Nobody is telling them they can't do it--They just have to get a warrant first.
The real question is whether citizens can put these gps trackers on police cars after this ruling?
I assume if they are allowed to, that there is more than one startup about to start a app so you can track all the LEOs around where you are. Which is just like a more complex radar detector, which we have already accepted.
It'll come back under a sneakier name, or a different focus, this is too good for them to give up. This was a victory for the 4th Amendment, and forgive my pessimism, but I believe it's temporary. The rule was that you cannot track a car without a warrant... I'm just waiting for:
"But judge, I wasn't tracking her car... I was tracking the box I attached to it, and that's my device so I'm allowed to track it."
There are a million ways to interpret the law, they'll find a way.
Every computer, hard drive, and laptop in my house is encrypted for both security and because it's nobody's business what I do in my digital life. Unfortunately I forgot the passwords **years** ago now, so I've been sitting around in the dark not using them, I swear! This is cause for plausible deniability (look into TrueCrypt, it allows for multiple passwords to unlock different locations on hard drives, so you can provide a perfectly innoculous password and still not unlock everything).
The supreme court upholds one right while a lower court takes one away, all in the same week. I'm not surprised, I just keep waiting for more and more stripping.
That TrueCrypt looks like an awesome tool! Thanks for the tip... I may download that...
(I don't have anything to hide, but it tickles me to think that the mere thought that I DO have something to hide might drive some Junior G-Man nuts, is enough to make me buy it.) Nothing drives them nuts like an encrypted mail message, either...("You MUST have something to hide...") They'll waste days chasing something that doesn't exist.
