Massachusetts Police Can't Place GPS On Autos Without Warrant 194
pickens writes "The EFF reports that the Supreme Court of Massachusetts has held in Commonwealth v. Connolly that police may not place GPS tracking devices on cars without first getting a warrant, reasoning that the installation of the GPS device was a seizure of the suspect's vehicle. Search and seizure is a legal procedure used in many civil law and common law legal systems whereby police or other authorities and their agents, who suspect that a crime has been committed, do a search of a person's property and confiscate any relevant evidence to the crime. According to the decision, 'when an electronic surveillance device is installed in a motor vehicle, be it a beeper, radio transmitter, or GPS device, the government's control and use of the defendant's vehicle to track its movements interferes with the defendant's interest in the vehicle notwithstanding that he maintains possession of it.' Although the case only protects drivers in Massachusetts, another recent state court case, People v. Weaver in the State of New York, also held that because modern GPS devices are far more powerful than beepers, police must get a warrant to use the trackers, even on cars and people traveling the public roads."
Re:What is very sad (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Would this kill Oregon's GPS mileage tax? (Score:3, Informative)
fishing expeditions (Score:5, Informative)
Suppose the technology becomes so cheap that a hundred thousand motorists can be tracked by GPS in any given city, much less any given state. Why wouldn't the police want to deploy every available tracking device in a fishing expedition, even if no suspicion of wrong-doing guides their choice of who to track? The odds are that eventually someone innocent will be in the wrong place at an inauspicious time. I wouldn't want to be that person, then have to explain how "opportunity" is irrelevant, especially if there is any vaguely tenable argument for the presence of means and motive.
Let them get warrants. Let there be some oversight. The technology hasn't been banned. Presumption of innocence shouldn't begin in the courtroom.
Re:fishing expeditions (Score:3, Informative)
Why bother when you can already do this with cameras [infowars.com]?
Re:What is very sad (Score:4, Informative)
In America, though, nothing stopped the state legislators from passing a law explicitly saying that police may not surreptitiously place a tracker on a car before getting a warrant. They could have done that long before any police officer got it in their head to overstep their boundary.
But of course, they were---especially in Massachusetts---too busy taxing and spending their constituent's money to devote any time to protecting their fundamental rights. But make no mistake. It is not the system that has failed, it's the legislators that the people of Massachusetts elected that have failed.
Nice troll. The law does specifically require a warrant [slashdot.org]. I'm rather upset that the police thought they could get away with it and wanted to test it. Just get the damn warrant! If your suspicions are sound you should be able to get it!
The ability of judges to relatively freely interpret laws as written is one of the checks and and balances in the system that has always amazed me. On one hand, it protects the people against bad laws. On the other it opens another avenue for abuse. I think it's better overall, but you end up with a very muddled law system.
This may be a bit out there, but I feel like the judiciary is a bit "unfinished". I think there needs to be better way for the judicial branch to recommend removal of and changes to laws to the legislative branch. Not force those recommendations mind you, just improve the process of refining laws.
Re:What is very sad (Score:3, Informative)
Why should we have laws for new shit that nobody's thought before.
The government should be on a "DENY ALL, ALLOW FOO" type policy for ALL actions. If the government wants to do something "new" they should get permission before they do it. PERIOD.
In this case, the police should have had a policy for GPS tracking devices in place BEFORE the first one was deployed. Strict guidelines on when, how, and why they are used.
This is the problem with the shoot first, ask questions later mentality we tend to have in our government.
But the dude was still busted, and conviction held (Score:3, Informative)
Re:How is the GPS installation physically done? (Score:4, Informative)
What if you see them putting the GPS on your car, after they have obtained a warrant? Are you allowed to take it off?
Yes, you can take off the device, just like you could take off any other part of your car. You can probably even destroy it if you want.
There's actually a guy who discovered a tracker, destroyed it, was arrested by the police for destroying their property, and he won, but an important part of the case was that there was no identifying mark on the tracker identifying it as police property.
They knew he knew it was a police tracker, but could not prove it. (And he, of course, didn't have to testify if he did or not.) Hence, legally, he could do whatever he wanted to it, just like he could to any other part of his car.
So, unless they've started labeling them 'property of the police', you can destroy them if you want, or just claim ownership of them. I mean, as far as you know, it's just some part of your car. They have to prove you knew it was owned by someone else.
If it is labeled as owned by someone else, it is legally 'mislaid property', which is when the owner put something somewhere on purpose and didn't come back to get it. (As opposed to, for example, dropping it, which is 'lost property'.)
You are required to turn 'mislaid property' over the owner of the premise it's found on. Aka, the owner of the car. After which, the owner of the car has to keep it for a specific amount of time in case the person comes back to claim it. If the owner does not come back to claim it in a specific amount of time, the car owner now legally owns it.
See your state laws for your requirements, and if you have any obligation to attempt to find the owner, or notify the police. (Hilariously, if you are required to notify the local police, some police departments are so discombobulated you could probably notify the people in charge of keeping track of lost property you'd found some GPS tracker owned by 'the police', and that would never get forward to anyone who would actually claim it.)
But, regardless of whether you know it's owned by someone else, and what the laws say about mislaid property, you can certainly remove it. It's your car, you can unattach anything from it you want. (Although you'll get a ticket if you remove headlights or mufflers or whatever and then attempt to operate it on a public road.;)
But now there are a lot of people flabberghasted I'd be saying this about official police stuff. Well, legally, once you know about a warrant, you can't interfere with it, so if you knew the police had installed it on your car as part of a legal search, you couldn't remove it.
But this requires them actually informing you of the warrant, which they obviously don't do for secret tracking. Otherwise, the law allows you to assume they absentmindedly installed a GPS tracker in your car while peering under your car, and forgot to pick it up when they stood up.
Re:What is very sad (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe this varies by state, but as someone who works in a 'related field' I can tell you this is wrong in several states, at least. Warrants are required to be very specific when it comes to which house is to be searched. I've seen cases where that meant a street address, and cases where that involved a detailed description of the house itself: Second house on x street from y street, with off-white paint and pale blue shutters.
I saw an example like the one above result in a failed raid, because the house in question had pale green shutters or something instead. Police were pretty sure they had the right house, but since the description didn't match exactly they had to stop the operation.
So no, "the place the money is hidden" won't fly for a search warrant.
Re:What is very sad (Score:3, Informative)
A roving wiretap indeed follows the target, who moves from location to location.
A roving wiretap does not follow the target.
The term "roving wiretap" is shorthand for a set of individual taps on multiple phones in series in an attempt to tap whatever phone the target is using at that point in time without a warrant specifically naming which phones will be tapped.
Comparing that to the gps tracker on a single car is misguided, a more correct analogy would be the emplacement and removal of gps trackers on any vehicle the target uses as he boards and disembarks each vehicle.