No Warrant Needed For GPS Tracking By Police 641
museumpeace writes "Ruling that a suspect nabbed using GPS sneaked into his vehicle by police without a warrant, has '... no expectation of privacy in the whereabouts of his vehicle on a public roadway,' a New York judge has seemingly moved the lines in the battle between privacy and police powers. CNET news has this story, which also says 'Not all uses are controversial. Trucking outfits use GPS boxes to keep track of their drivers' locations, and companies sell software to dispatchers that instantly calculates which taxi is closest to a customer.' But I don't buy that. Yesterday in Massachusetts, a snow plow operator, too dumb to know his truck had GPS, exposed himself to a woman at a coffee shop, hopped back in his truck and was apprehended in minutes because the state troopers, knowing only the location of the coffee shop and that it was a snow plow operator, could find his exact whereabouts."
Okay, so this changes what again? (Score:5, Interesting)
As much as I'm against the Big Brother state, I gotta say it's a little absurd to expect privacy while you're on the road. I mean, the cops don't need a warrant to tail you. They don't need a warrant to put out an APB for your car. Those things accomplish the same thing as GPS -- either tracking your movements or locating you, and they're all completely legal and, in my opinion, reasonable.
This isn't a case of erosion of privacy. It isn't a freedom being taken away. It's not, in my decidedly non-lawyer opinion, a violation of anybody's Constitutional rights. It's just a new way of doing the same things that have been done for decades.
Re:Okay, so this changes what again? (Score:3, Interesting)
GPS jammer (Score:5, Interesting)
Privacy or not (Score:2, Interesting)
I could care less about the GPS and tracking him. What if in installing their little bugs they nick a brake or fuel line, and someone winds up dead?
Note to cops: If I see anyone fucking around under the hood of my car in the middle of the night, I WILL shoot first, and ask questions later, and I will be completely within my rights to do so.
Isn't a Warrant Needed? (Score:5, Interesting)
When Robert Moran drove back to his law offices in Rome, N.Y., after a plane trip to Arizona in July 2003, he had no idea that a silent stowaway was aboard his vehicle: a secret GPS bug implanted without a court order by state police. (my bold)
...and...
What's raising eyebrows, though, is the increasingly popular law enforcement practice of secretly tagging Americans' vehicles without adhering to the procedural safeguards and judicial oversight that protect the privacy of homes and telephone conversations from police abuses. (my bold)
The last line sums it up - it seems that police more and more are not adhering to the "rules" to prevent abuse, and now this judge has given his consent for the police to break those "rules". I have no problem using GPS as a surveylance technique, as it's like planting a bug or homing device, but as long as the judicial process has been followed. This ruling by the judge starts to erode at the "innocent until proven guilty" theory. It's the abuses under the Patriot Act all over again.
Re:Okay, so this changes what again? (Score:4, Interesting)
Consider the example of a CEO of a big company. A lot of people would consider it interesting, to say the least, where they have travelled to and who else has travelled there.
If that doesn't do it for you, perhaps because the law doesn't usually apply to big shot CEOs, or perhaps because big CEOs are too far removed from your sphere of experience, consider homosexuals. It's legal (in many places) to be homosexual, but many people don't approve of it, and so there are social consequences to being publically outed. Although you haven't commited a crime, you might get unwanted police attention if Officer Homophobe knew you had travelled to a gay-bar.
Still not convinced? Consider the (admittedly unlikely) scenario of a massive backlash by vergetarians against the meat-eaters. After a decades long war that divides families, eating meat becomes illegal, but some people still like to do it, they have just been forced underground. Would like it to be known to the vege-cops that you have been to a suspected slaughter-house (slang for restaurant that serves meat of course)?
Hey, it happened with slavery.
Re:Okay, so this changes what again? (Score:3, Interesting)
The GPS will not incriminate you. The illegal activities it allows the police to monitor will, and yes it's no different than the cops using a plane or a car to follow you, just a lot cheaper.
It isn't about tracking,... (Score:3, Interesting)
I personally believe that this is a violation of the intent of the fourth amendment. Of course, as I am not a lawyer or a judge, my opinion doesn't really matter.
Strange Double Standard (Score:5, Interesting)
1 - Police Don't Need Warrant To Use This
2 - In Colorado, a man was convicted for tracking his (soon to be ex) wife using one of these.
Call me a bit strange, however, if an ordinary person can be charged (and convicted) for doing this, then really doesn't that suggest that there needs to be some form of judical oversight when the police do it?
Boris.
Disclaimer - I'm not even in the US.
Your car (Score:5, Interesting)
So what if it's not in the car. It's still being put on my property. Does this mean that the police can attach whatever they want to my vehicle, so long as they don't open the doors, etc?
The point is that the vehicle was tampered with: without a warrant and without notification of the owner.
Re:Can of worms (Score:2, Interesting)
There are many good reasons (as others have given), but I'm pretty sure they'd lose lots of GPS units if they started puting them on cars in high crime areas. I'm pretty sure they can be reprogrammed or rewired for profit.
Which leads me to ask, "If someone hides a GPS on my car and I find it, do I get to keep it?" and "If I take one off another car, who am I stealing from?"
Re:Okay, so this changes what again? (Score:3, Interesting)
Cop Locator WebSite (Score:4, Interesting)
I was working on a project some years ago tracking the location of public transit vehicles, using a subrate data service called CDPD (Cellular Digital Packetized Data or some such...)
We squawked to the vendor of the hardware (Trimble Navigation) that the units had absolutely no access control - allowing any user who knew the IP address of the device to connect to it, and change its stream-of-consciousness reporting, or merely poll it for its current location.
They told us this was not a great concern.
A little human engineering later, we had the IP block used by one of their largest customers (The California Highway Patrol), and showed up at a meeting, not with a map of our transit system, but a display showing the current position, direction and speed of every CHP patrol car in northern California. They finally decided that maybe access control was a good idea.
Now that would have been a moneymaking dot-com!
big fuss about GPS plow monitoring last year (Score:3, Interesting)
Last year the state switched from logbooks to these devices. For weeks (and I do mean weeks) snowplow operators bitched about it to any news crew that would point a camera at them. They said most of them had not received training on their use (true), the snow in the air/on the truck, and cab design would often block the signal from reaching the unit and cause it to not record miles that had been plowed (also true.) What nobody was willing to say was that it ALSO recorded every coffee break that truck operator Bob reported previously as "down that country lane over there". Most of the legitimate complaints were addressed with training by the state and redesigned brackets to hold the units to keep them on the dash and in a good position.
Every snow plow operator in the country was following along and knew all about these devices well before the first flake dropped last year. Hell, MA truck operators threatened to strike. It was a BIG deal.
Re:Okay, so this changes what again? (Score:2, Interesting)
Are there any off the shelf detectors/receivers?
Bestest GPS Jammer (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Your car (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Okay, so this changes what again? (Score:3, Interesting)
Logically yes.
"It could certainly make for an interesting legal situation if a person were to go up to a cop, say `I'm going to put this tracking bug on your car', and then proceed to do so. The cop would probably say `you can't do that', then arrest him when he tries to do so anyways
The point of the ruling would seem to be that we wouldn't have too. Like putting a flyer on the windsheild of the car, or a tracking device underneath....no real legal difference right... ummm right?.
I've thought for a while now that this would be a good business idea... to give people a website to track the current location of police cars. Not to help criminals, but to help good law abiding citizens avoid trouble spots... A real money maker, thanks to this court's decision this would be a lot more economical than just tailing cops a having people report their positions.
Probably though, this would become yet another one of the growing examples where government agents get exempted from the application of a new law that applies to you and me.
I think I'm going to recycle my tin foil hat and get myself something a little stronger.