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Police Secretly Planting GPS Devices On Cars
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Aug 13, 2008 07:15 PM
from the spiderman-does-it-all-the-time dept.
from the spiderman-does-it-all-the-time dept.
bfwebster writes "The Washington Post has a long investigative article on how more and more police departments are secretly planting GPS tracking devices on the cars of people they are investigating — usually without a warrant. After-the-fact court challenges on this technique have largely upheld such use of a GPS device, though the Washington State Supreme Court has ruled that a warrant is required."
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Do the police... (Score:5, Insightful)
Do the police require a warrant if they want to follow me around for the day? If yes then I believe this should require a warrant. Else, what's the diff except it costs much less and is more discrete.
Grump
Re:Do the police... (Score:5, Interesting)
Do the police require a warrant if they want to follow me around for the day? If yes then I believe this should require a warrant. Else, what's the diff except it costs much less and is more discrete.
Grump
Let's try a better analogy:
Do the police need a warrant to overhear my conversations while I'm on my cell phone in a public place? No, but they are legally required to have one if they're going to bug my phone.
Parent
Re:Do the police... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Do the police... (Score:5, Funny)
It depends, is it an African midget or a European midget?
Parent
Re:Do the police... (Score:5, Interesting)
A GPS tracker will track exactly where the car is no matter what.
Given the limitations of GPS, except for when it's in a garage or building ;)
Seriously, though, if the police put a tracker on my car, and are unable to produce documentation demonstrating that they have done so, is the tracker mine if I discover it before they remove it?
Parent
Re:Do the police... (Score:5, Insightful)
Else, what's the diff except it costs much less and is more discrete.
Good argument. Then you'd also agree that I can put a GPS on anyones car without permission, including the police, elected officials, or you?
Parent
Re:Do the police... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Do the police... (Score:5, Interesting)
an example today: New Orleans cops who shot and killed civilians. Dismissed.
as to "If you do it"; a while ago in Portland OR the Mayor and chief of police (now the new mayor) said it was ok to look through the trash of a person of interest so... a local paper looked through the MAYOR's trash and published the results. Sure were a lot of wine bottles.....
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Re:Do the police... (Score:5, Informative)
Would you trust /.?
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/05/1730239 [slashdot.org]
"According to this article at CNN: Police arrested a man they said tracked his ex-girlfriend's whereabouts by attaching a global positioning system to her car. Police said Gabrielyan attached a cellular phone to the woman's car on August 16 with a motion switch that turned on when the car moved, transmitting a signal each minute to a satellite. Information was then sent to a Web site that allowed Gabrielyan to monitor the woman's location." A ruling last year stated that police need a warrant to track individuals in a similar fashion.
found this too: http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2334039 [go.com]
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Re:Do the police... (Score:5, Informative)
Do the police require a warrant if they want to follow me around for the day? If yes then I believe this should require a warrant. Else, what's the diff except it costs much less and is more discrete.
The problem is twofold:
1. If they damage your car, that is vandalism/destruction of private property.
2. If they find some sort of incriminating evidence and are on private property without a warrant then that evidence is inadmissible in court.
Therefore it's prudent and not trespassing when they do this. Until then, those pricks in the van otside can waste all the gas they want.
Parent
The difference between "following" and "tracking" (Score:5, Interesting)
An easy way to answer your question, and countless others like it:
"What would happen to me, as a private citizen, if I did this to a cop?"
If the answer is "Nothing," then it's probably a reasonable thing for the cops to do to you. If the answer is "Waal, I believe that there'd be a tasin', boy," then it is not.
So, you tell me. What do you think would happen if you were caught placing tracking devices on police cars?
And as for the courts permitting this kind of crap to occur: remember the most important lesson of the Gulag Archipelago. The judicial system is your last defense. When they fail to protect your rights, the time for peaceful reckoning is past.
Parent
Re:Do the police... (Score:5, Interesting)
Do the police require a warrant if they want to follow me around for the day?
No.
If yes then I believe this should require a warrant.
But its no.
Else, what's the diff except it costs much less and is more discrete.
Good point. I wonder if the police would object if I went up to their patrol cars, ghost cars, and other vehicles and slapped my own gps transmitters on them, and then published their whearabouts in realtime on google maps. I mean, I could do all this legally if I just had a bunch of people follow their cars around all day and post their whearabouts, right?
So whats the diff except that it costs much less and is more discrete?
Yet, something tells me the police would object strenuously to this.
Parent
Analogies Not Sufficient (Score:5, Informative)
Do the police require a warrant if they want to follow me around for the day? If yes then I believe this should require a warrant. Else, what's the diff except it costs much less and is more discrete.
No, they don't need a warrant to tail you, your whereabouts in public places isn't considered a search, but public information. However...
The Sixth Circuit held [wislawjournal.com] in the Baily case, of attaching a beeper (rather than GPS, c.1980), that merely analogizing with tailing isn't sufficient to decide the issue, it's one of reasonable expectation of privacy.
The judge in the 7th circuit Garcia case wrote :
Personally, I read that as a warning, not a suggestion, but it's what he feels the law allows for. I'm slowly being persuaded by Moore's Law that perhaps a Constitutional Amendment clarifying the right to privacy (which many of us feels already exists in the 4th amendment) would be an OK thing. Now, to get Congress to pass that (ha!).
Bruce Schneier argues [schneier.com] for the requirements of warrants for these kinds of tracking, to prevent rampant growth and abuse of the police state.
Fortunately for the police state, citizens are voluntarily loading up their cars with tracking devices (EZ Pass, Tire Pressure Monitors, OnStar), so they don't have to even bother installing a GPS device in some cases. Sure, everybody knows that cell phones can be tracked, but how many people know that federally-mandated tire pressure monitoring systems send out a unique 'MAC' for every wheel?
What's gotten people burned in several cases I've read about is that they were driving vehicles they didn't own, and the courts make a distinction there. Does the car you regularly drive have your name on the title or your wife's? That's exactly what got one guy's 4th amendment defense thrown out - his wife 'owned' the car he used, so they weren't tracking his property and he didn't have standing.
Parent
Re:Do the police... (Score:5, Informative)
Do the police require a warrant if they want to follow me around for the day?
If they do it for very long I'm betting you'd have a harassment case.
what's the diff except it costs much less and is more discrete.
Well, at the risk of repeating you, it costs less, which means there is no natural inhibition to them doing it on a large scale, and it's more discrete, which means the public is unable to connect with it as an issue for discussion.
The cost / large scale surveillance issue is ultimately an extension of reasonable expectation of privacy. While a person does not have a reasonable expectation to never be seen when out driving around, they do (at least IMO) have a reasonable expectation to not have their entire route history recorded.
The public awareness issue is a simple matter of who is watching the watchers. The public should know how many of these things are in use and (after a blackout period to allow temporary covert surveillance) who they are being used on. The reason is accountability; if the people decide they don't want this, their wishes must be obeyed. But the people cannot express an informed opinion about that which they cannot see.
A black & white following a car around is a public statement, "We are watching you." A GPS device with no warrant is also a statement, "We don't want you to know how much we're watching you." I don't trust a "Democracy" that doesn't want me to know what it is doing (after a reasonable black-op period of course, maybe maxing out at something like a year or two) in my name.
"The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted." - James Madison
I figure Madison was a pretty sharp guy, and he spent literally years discussing and forming his concepts with other heroes of our history. You can study the causes for his views in such pieces as Common Sense and The Federalist Papers, or you can just respect his credentials. But if you haven't spent a few years studying the topic, you should beware that the risks he wanted to avoid are not just hypothetical.
Parent
Re:Do the police... (Score:5, Informative)
They don't need a warrant.
Essentially, the police can make any observations they want, provided they do it from a vantage point they have a right to be. They can, for example, make aerial observations of your home provided they don't fly lower than is normal or prudent.
A cop can watch you walk across a public square. He can even note this down if he wants to. Technology adds the wrinkle that he doesn't necessarily have to be in the square to do this. He can use surveillance cameras. Or a computer with face recognition software.
This is a bug in the Bill of Rights. It was hacked together all too hastily, therefore it isn't very good about laying out actual rights. It's more focused on curbing specific abuses. Well times change, and technology changes, and with it the kinds of abuses that are possible.
The law as we inherited it from our forbears assumes that surveillance is too costly to employ frivolously, and that therefore the government has a strong disincentive to use it; and if it is used there is an assumption the government has a strong incentive to stop. And this was true for a long time. As a consequence, suspicion is viewed from a legal standpoint as something more benign than it really is. Suspicion leads to investigation which either leads to exoneration or an indictment. Failing either of these results probably meant that there just wasn't enough investigation possible given the resources and time available.
Anyhow, that's how you can fall onto a terrorist watch list and the onus is on you to get yourself off and if the system keeps dropping you on it, tough luck for you. The possibility of cheap, automated suspicion is something that would never have occurred to the founders.
The new frontier of tyranny is the use of widespread, unpredictable surveillance, not for gathering information, but for exerting social control. The Chinese are masters of this. Under this form of tyranny, you end up internalizing whatever rules the masters want.
There is nothing specific in the Constitution that keeps the government from using technology to watch, catalog and cross reference every movement of every member of the population, provided that the information is obtained legally. Legally would include any observations they make from a public place, or can buy from a private source. And since surveillance is clearly one of the things the government is empowered to do, and such uses of surveillance aren't expressly forbidden, there is a school of Constitutional thought that says this is allowable.
Fortunately, this kind of literalist reading of the Constitution is not yet the prevailing one.
With respect to the GPS on the car -- that could be an interesting Constitutional case, although not one I'd like to see before this court. But then, you never know. It reminds me of a case a few years back in which the police used thermal imaging of a suspect's home walls as probable cause to support a (successful) search for a marijuana garden. The arguments were all over the place as you might imagine, but Scalia, if I recall, was one of those who thought this was probably not allowable.
Parent
Re:Do the police... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is ok, but with a warrant, IMHO.
Parent
Re:Do the police... (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably because in some cases that is exactly what is happening. Speed limits in some areas are set unrealistically low. Local traffic is basically ignored at any speed. Out of state plates will be pulled over and ticketed, even though to be safe they should be flowing with traffic.
Traffic laws are also subject to politics. We don't get safety all the time. Sometimes it is just the perception of safety. Speed variance is a bigger killer than raw speed, but our speed limits are generally set lower than most drivers can handle. This results in one subset of the population doing the speed limit and the other subset of the population driving at a reasonable rate of speed for the road. So you'll get a spread of, say, 15 mph. A car going 75 is much more likely to hit a car doing 60 than it is to hit another car going 75. But we blame the speeders because they are speeding, rather than seeing that the system is stupid and dangerous.
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Re:Do the police... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Do the police... (Score:5, Informative)
Let's suppose that an officer on the street can observe me in my house by looking through the window. Is the police officer then justified in mounting a camera to the side of my house and pointing it in the window without first obtaining a warrant?
I think most people would agree that the police do not have the right to mount a camera to my house, building, or any other structure without my consent or a court issued warrant.
If mounting the camera to my house is not allowed, why are they allowed to mount other foreign objects (GPS) to my moveable property (car) without a warrant?
Whether reasonably measurable or not, they are, without my express authorization or compensation, using energy from my vehicle and causing additional wear and tear on my vehicle. This could be construed as theft of service (transportation fees).
Parent
Yes, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
If they attach it to my car without my permission, doesn't it become MINE to do whatever I want with? Seriously, how many of these do they really expect to recover and download data from? Plus, doesn't it become "theft of services" the minute they hook it up to my car's electrical system?
Re:Yes, but... (Score:5, Funny)
I'd think you could take it off and toss it in a dumpster if you found it.
Wouldn't it be more fun to attach it to a random taxicab instead? If you really want to screw with someone, you could always go to a gas station near a freeway, look for someone towing a boat and obviously on their way to some vacation hotspot, and then attach the device to the boat when its owner isn't looking...
Parent
Re:Yes, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you post at +2 with trolls like that?
They may not dispense justice, but they can arrest and imprison you for days without filing charges. You get to be packed into a room full of real criminals for 72 hours while they figure out if you should even be charged or not.
But I guess since there are no crooked cops this is not a problem.
Parent
Scarier still... (Score:5, Informative)
If you RTFA, you'll see a poll asking if people approve this tactic. As of right now, 55% do.
Tracking Devices and the Fourth Amendment (Score:5, Interesting)
Alright, having just written a legal brief on the subject, I'll explain the legal rationale behind these rulings so that we can actually have an intelligent debate on this subject.
The Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures, only applies when a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy in the item or information searched or seized.
Here, the information about the person's location is what is being "seized." Thus, the way the debate is framed centers around the question: Does a person have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their location?
Now, the law is pretty clear in some respects. For example, you have a reasonable expectation of privacy in your home. Thus, the Fourth Amendment applies, and police need a warrant to track your movements in your home.
On the other hand, you have no expectation of privacy when you travel out in public. This is rather obvious because when you travel in public, everyone around you can see you and knows where you are. Thus, the Fourth Amendment does not apply, and it has been long established law that police can conduct surveillance on anyone in a public area without a warrant. (Note: This is the same basic rationale by which placing cameras on street corners does not violate the Fourth Amendment.)
The Supreme Court has further extended this rationale to apply to electronic tracking devices (e.g., GPS, Triangulation Beacons) used for tracking people in public. The rationale is that as long as the subject is in public, he has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his location.
Thus, the Fourth Amendment does not apply and you have no constitutional protection against police attaching a GPS device to your car. Police can track your car with a GPS locator, provided they break no laws with respect to installing the locator (A non-constitutional issue).
That said, the Supreme Court has left the door open to regulating this type of behavior by police. The majority opinion in U.S. v. Knotts left open the possibility of using "different constitutional principles" to regulate police use of tracking devices if "dragnet type law enforcement practices" developed. Dragnet in this context refers to systematic and coordinated measures for apprehending criminals or suspects.
Thus, presumably one could argue that if the police started using GPS devices in our cell phones to track everyone in a systematic manner, another constitutional principle, like for example the right of privacy, could be applied to find a constitutional ground to prevent it. Whether the Supreme Court chooses to use the dicta in Knotts is of course up to it.
Anyway, that's it, have fun debating.
Re:If you have nothing to hide (Score:5, Insightful)
The police and FBI have a long, sordid history of intimidation, harassment and disruption of dissident groups and activists (up to and including murder [wikipedia.org]). Any state surveillance of people should require a warrant—both to provide some oversight (which isn't much, considering the way some courts like to rubber-stamp these requests [commondreams.org]) and make a record of the state's activities against its own citizens.
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