Court Rules Probable-Cause Warrant Required For GPS Trackers 116
schwit1 tips this news from Wired:
"An appellate court has finally supplied an answer to an open question left dangling by the Supreme Court in 2012: Do law enforcement agencies need a probable-cause warrant to affix a GPS tracker to a target's vehicle? The justices said the government's statement 'wags the dog rather vigorously,' noting that the primary reason for a search cannot be to generate evidence for law enforcement purposes. They also noted that 'Generally speaking, a warrantless search is not rendered reasonable merely because probable cause existed that would have justified the issuance of a warrant.' The justices also rejected the government's argument that obtaining a warrant would impede the ability of law enforcement to investigate crimes."
More importantly... (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if it would impede law enforcement's ability to investigate crimes, we must recognize that freedom is simply more important.
Re:More importantly... (Score:5, Interesting)
Astonishing isn't it? Warrantless searches are, themselves crimes. LEO are saying that they need to commit crimes in order to investigate crimes. I hate Law Enforcement Officers. I respect Police Officers. There is a fundamental difference between the two. One who identifies as a Police Officer recognizes that they are to serve the public by helping to keep the peace. One who identifies as a Law Enforcement Officers proclaims himself to be a tool of the state, to enforce any dictate of the state, no matter how offensive to the concept of a free people. Law Enforcement Officers (I'm Law Enforcement, we need to get Law Enforcement here, don't defend yourself - wait for Law Enforcement) need to be publicly shamed.
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Astonishing isn't it? Warrant-less searches are, themselves crimes.
The problem is that warrant-less searches are not themselves crimes. Not in any jurisdiction I'm aware of.
They are simply inadmissible as evidence.
The act itself might be chargeable as breaking and entering, but in the present case, nothing was broken into, and no place was entered.
Our constitution forbids some powers from being used by the government, but never lists any penalties.
Consequently, things like secret tracking to discover a crime without a warrant is inadmissible, but not punishable.
Once a pol
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Consequently, things like secret tracking to discover a crime without a warrant is inadmissible, but not punishable.
Evidence being inadmissable _is_ the punishment.
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Until there is a prison sentence or a fine involved there is no punishment.
If the police catch a bank robber, and merely take the money back and send him on his way, is that punishment?
Is it a deterrence?
Or is it just an admonition to be more clever next time?
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How did net neutrality get dragged into this?
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Not only more important, but compulsory under the constitution.
it doesn't (Score:2)
It doesn't "impede law enforcement's ability to investigate crimes". If a crime has been committed the police can obtain a warrant and legally have a GPS device attached.
Instead, what is does is impede is law enforcement's investigations when no known crime has been committed.
Re:More importantly... (Score:4, Insightful)
"Even if it would impede law enforcement's ability to investigate crimes, we must recognize that freedom is simply more important."
Convenience of law enforcement is NEVER justification for diminishing citizen's rights.
The government has often tried to use this argument in the past. "If we cannot do this, it is just too hard to catch criminals." Note that this excuse can ALWAYS be argued, no matter how many powers you give the police. That makes it one of those constant pressures that must be resisted at all costs.
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"That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved." -- Benjamin Franklin, letter to Benjamin Vaughan, March 14, 1785.
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The government has often tried to use this argument in the past.
And unfortunately, they have succeeded at it most of the time.
There is potential for greater good in this ruling (if this court decision, which in our crazy patchwork application of the Equal Protection Clause, only applies in the Third District, is followed elsewhere.).
It could be construed to mean that if the police need a warrant to use their GPS tracker they might also need a warrant to use MY GPS tracker (our phones).
However, these rulings really make no sense as long as the courts continue to meekly a
Laws prevent lawlessness (Score:2)
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flame on!
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Rite Aid isn't a person. Two, weak troll is weak.
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Why is my Rite Aid's freedom not to be robbed less important to you than crooks having the freedom to move untracked by law enforcement?
It isn't. Crooks can be tracked. Law abiding citizens cannot. What this is saying is that it is a judge, not a cop, who decides who is a crook. If a cop wants to track someone, then they need to go to a judge and show probable cause that they are actually a crook.
If they weren't robbing a store, what bad would have come from having a GPS unit attached to their car?
You are assuming that the loss of privacy is not "bad".
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Why is my Rite Aid's freedom not to be robbed less important to you than crooks having the freedom to move untracked by law enforcement? What I don't understand is how this helps anyone but the crooks? If they weren't robbing a store, what bad would have come from having a GPS unit attached to their car?
Define "crooks". You mean like armed robbers or anti-fracking activists?
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It just means the Police will need to actually do their job rather than just tracking everyone. If the police had been doing neighborhood patrols, they would have caught the rite-aid burglars before they got away with the stuff.
Let's see if I got this (Score:5, Insightful)
the primary reason for a search cannot be to generate evidence for law enforcement purposes.
So, we don't have any evidence now so we'll attach this GPS tracker to their car and then we'll have evidence that justifies tracking their car!
Law enforcement logic.
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Basically.
tl;dr You need a proper warrant to do this because its fishing for info and needs time limits.
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Now lets hope they extend that logic to the NSA fishing though our email and giving the results to law enforcement for parallel construction.
Re:Let's see if I got this (Score:5, Insightful)
And - as importantly - let's hope NSA and the other Three-Letter-Agencies actually obey these laws.
Unfortunately, because they so often operate in secret, it's very hard to monitor their compliance. And as we've seen repeatedly throughout the last century, they are quite willing to bend or break the law to achieve their goals.
So while it's great that a judge has smacked down local police's ability to tag innocent civilians with warrentless-GPS trackers (whose activities have to be revealed in court), it likely does little or nothing to stop the Federal agencies from continuing to do the same.
Re:Let's see if I got this (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, that's exactly what they've been saying.
"If we can't monitor you to prove you're doing something bad, we'll never be able to know".
Law enforcement and governments have decided it's too inconvenient to follow the procedural rules which have been established, and more or less started trying to make the case for just bypassing them out of convenience.
And, sadly, some of the courts seem stacked with people inclined to just say "well, if you're law enforcement, go ahead".
Re:Let's see if I got this (Score:4, Insightful)
The courts have long been like a Range Safety Officer who hasn't seen something go wrong in so long that they just skim the safety plans and supporting documentation.
The problem is that at least for the Range Safety Officers, when something goes wrong, the blame immediately falls on them. With the courts, it's not often easy to know when something goes wrong, and even when you do know, blame rarely falls back on the courts.
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what is a range safety officer
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i bet that the RSO needs to keep firm control when everybody around him is armed! I'd be like, what up mofo, I'm pretty sure I can use whatever ammunition I want!
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I bet it's because everybody is armed! it's like the ultimate concealed carry society. don't mess with anybody, because you never know when you'll encounter a crazy with lethal stopping power. that's what the second amendment is for. from my cold dead hands!
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i bet that the RSO needs to keep firm control when everybody around him is armed! I'd be like, what up mofo, I'm pretty sure I can use whatever ammunition I want!
He can ask you to leave. If you don't leave, it's called "armed trespass". In Florida, that's up to five years in jail. 10 years automatically if you point the gun at someone.
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In Florida, that's up to five years in jail. 10 years automatically if you point the gun at someone.
and yet it's legal to shoot people dead in the street if they "make you feel threatened"?? Only in Florida!
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what is a range safety officer
It's a term used for the person who is ultimately responsible for maximizing safety at a 'range'. While others have pointed out that a Range Safety Officer is often the person responsible for safety at a shooting range, it is a general term and I'm most familiar with them at Test Ranges for government equipment.
This is in general, and sometimes the responsibilities are split to different roles, but in general: In order to maximize safety, it is the Range Safety Officer (or similar term) who has ultimate
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The entire point of the fourth amendment was to shoot down the exact logic law enforcement (and the NSA) use for this kind of stuff..
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But the Fourth Amendment only helps criminals and terrorists. Why are you on the side of criminals and terrorists, Citizen?
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I'm on the side that I'm on because the criminals and terrorists that scare me the most are the ones that work in my own government.
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Why are you on the side of criminals and terrorists, Citizen?
I try to support my elected officials, whenever it is sane to do so.
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the primary reason for a search cannot be to generate evidence for law enforcement purposes.
So, we don't have any evidence now so we'll attach this GPS tracker to their car and then we'll have evidence that justifies tracking their car!
Law enforcement logic.
And like most things, this is not new. It is COINTELPRO all over again. It is substantially identical, other than the particular gadget in question.
Re:Let's see if I got this (Score:4, Informative)
Law enforcement logic.
"These guys have it coming".
To even be in law enforcement, you have to drink vigorously from the cup of ends-justify-the-means.
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To even be in law enforcement, you have to drink vigorously from the cup of ends-justify-the-means.
and booze.
Re:Let's see if I got this, get this.. (Score:4, Interesting)
You raise an interesting point: I've always been of the opinion that there should be a concept of 'blinders' for crime not related to the immediate emergency situation.
ie: If you call the police to report someone invading your home with a gun, you should not be afraid that when the police enter your home they will discover that you were involved in some other crime and charge you with that. The rationale behind my opinion is that I feel it is more important that people not be afraid to call the police than it is for every minor crime to be prosecuted.
Kind of like a prostitute hesitating to call the police when she gets beaten up by a client because she is afraid of being arrested for prostitution. I feel it is more important that the violent person be arrested.
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Only black-market resolutions are available (usually violence).
and breakdancing!
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This is precisely why some argue that prostitution and recreational drugs should be legalized. When conflicts arise surrounding these relatively innocuous, yet illegal activities, there is no legal recourse for the parties involved. Only black-market resolutions are available (usually violence).
I remember reading that someone called the police because someone stole his illegal drugs. The police _did_ arrest the thief. They also arrested the guy who called the police...
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I remember reading that someone called the police because someone stole his illegal drugs. The police _did_ arrest the thief. They also arrested the guy who called the police...
In the classic/maudlin/blackhumor fashion, the title of the article for that encounter should have been:
"And what did we learn..."
govt logic (Score:2)
Obtaining a warrant would impede our ability to conduct warrantless searches!
Can you climb into the backseat and hide? (Score:5, Insightful)
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As a GPS tracker is simply a proxy for a person hiding in the car and tagging along for the ride, writing down everyplace you go, the answer to this question has always been pretty self-evident to me. You need a warrant.
If that were true then no warrant would be needed, as following a person is not illegal barring intimidation/harassment. The major difference is that they are affixing an object to a person's property without the owner's consent in order to track them. Putting a tracking or listening device on a person's property constitutes a search and requires a warrant.
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The police tailing a person without a warrant isn't illegal, but them breaking into someone's car and hiding in the back seat to do so (with no warrant) would be illegal. If the tracking device could follow the car without actually being affixed to it in some way, it would likely be completely legal to do this with no warrant. I don't see little "miniature drone cars" happening anytime soon, though.
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Good point. I was assuming that the person was travelling on public property or was visible from public property. If the person gets in their car (parked on a short driveway visible from the street), drives (via public roads) to another location and parks in a location on or visible from public property, there is no problem with police in an unmarked vehicle following them. The second it goes onto private property and they need to enter said property to keep their target in sight, though, a warrant is ne
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Are those solutions in order? Because my trunk monkey got scared by the snakes and ran away because there was no trunk lid.
You bastard!
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They're already in the back seat with license plate scanners, speed and red light cameras as well as toll tag devices that allow you to be tracked, all with varying degrees of protection and retention policies for the data. The ACLU has been trying to dig into this further and frankly, it's a mess and there's no consistency on policy. [aclu.org] In some areas there's no policy, so presumably anybody could get information and they'll keep it forever. So while they're not tracking you moment to moment a determined
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The police have the right to tail a suspect. So if they want a GPS track of the suspect vehicle then they should attach a GPS tracker to the police vehicle and follow the suspect around. No need for a warrant.
The police do not have the right to install a device in or on your vehicle without a warrant.
Big freaking difference.
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Tailing a person is perfectly legal. There are two main differences. If the tailee goes into his/her house or other private property, the cop doesn't get to follow. GPS would still be attached.
Also, tailing people manually hits up against some serious logistical problems as it expands. You'd need at least 2 or 3 cops for round the clock surveillance of one person. Trying to track every single movement of any significant number of people starts to get cost prohibitive very quickly, unless you have a s
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Another fourth amendment question: I know you need a warrant to wiretap a person's phone (at least, you're supposed to need one), but do you need one to listen in using a parabolic microphone?
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I don't know about you, but I park my vehicle in my garage. That's inside.
Most apartment parking lots count as private property, too (owned by the landlord or parent company)
IANAL, and I don't have a legal answer for the microphone question, but I'd wager it would fall under "reasonable expectation of privacy" established in Katz v. United States. If I'm sitting in a public park, or at a restaurant, at the beach, etc ... LEOs would be able to use high powered recording equipment to monitor my conversati
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As a GPS tracker is simply a proxy for a person hiding in the car and tagging along for the ride, writing down everyplace you go, the answer to this question has always been pretty self-evident to me. You need a warrant.
It's not that simple, because you could achieve almost exactly the same result as a GPS with a helicopter and a large enough fleet of undercover cars. It seems the argument needs to be made on the grounds that it is not in the interests of the public if the police's job becomes too easy. This argument is necessary if one also wants to argue against the prevalence of electronic means of reading license plates. Reading a single plate with an electronic device is not substantively different from a cop reading
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And to that point, I wouldn't mind if they can read thousands of them daily, so long as the record of it and the location of the car is not used for any other purpose beyond the immediate -- checking registration, reports of it being stolen, or involved in an active crime. Once it is determined that it is not, the records must be eliminated.
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so long as the record of it and the location of the car is not used for any other purpose beyond the immediate -- checking registration, reports of it being stolen, or involved in an active crime.
IIRC, they're already storing the data in some places, and there have been fights about how long they can hold it.
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...not agencies that do not need to care about the law.
In this case isn't it the other way round? You could put a tracker on a neighbours car for some reason (maybe check he's far away when you visit his wife) then hear that someone matching his description was seen at a crime scene, check and find that he was there, then call the police. In this case the police would be able to use the tracking information without a warrant, as it was supplied to them by a private individual not connected to law enforcement.
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Isn't that similar to what they do with the data that corporations have on people? They don't need a warrant if the corporation will willingly give it away? This is all pretty clearly a violate of the constitution, but they'll do anything to justify their corruption.
I hear what you are saying, but there has to be limits. If you stretch this argument to the limit you could end up saying that an eyewitness account of someone seeing a crime from their bedroom window should be inadmissible because for the police to look out of the window would have required a warrant!
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The point is, we shouldn't let the government essentially outsource its spying to corporations. If they have private data on someone stored someone, the police should need a warrant to get it.
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Except placing the tracking device, even as a private citizen, is trespassing. The police should need a warrant to request private records from a 3rd party.
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That's only because the courts have bent logic over backward to violate constitutional rights in spirit.
In a sane legal system, your evidence would not be usable since it was the product of an illegal act and use of it would make you an agent of the government and so your crime becomes their crime.
If you SAW the guy at the crime scene, it's OK because it's perfectly legal to see a person while you're on public property.
It's about time. (Score:2)
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after all, you refusing to give up your fifth amendment rights makes it hard to investigate as well, and I don't see anyone ACTIVELY trying to get rid of those. Behind the scenes when they think we aren't looking, they're working on it...
Unfortunately there are more then a few morons that think the greater good of society would be served better without the 5th amendment. Bennett Haselton's Response To That "Don't Talk to Cops" Video [slashdot.org]
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you refusing to give up your fifth amendment rights makes it hard to investigate as well, and I don't see anyone ACTIVELY trying to get rid of those.
You haven't been looking very far. http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2012/01/can-a-court-make-you-give-up-your-password/ [go.com]
"impede the ability of law enforcement" (Score:5, Insightful)
All oversight impedes the one's ability to do one's job. The whole point is that it's a trade-off against the costs of the lack of oversight. Other things that impede law enforcement:
1) Need to actually prove someone committed a crime
2) Restrictions on tasering people "because they look a bit crimey"
3) Not permitted to use seized drugs to hold a "pot brownie fundraiser"
An ointment in the fly (Score:2)
To little to late (Score:4, Interesting)
They now have cameras, character recognition and databases that can track you pretty much anywhere.
What we NEED is a court to rule that data-mining constitutes an ersatz search and is protected.
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They now have cameras, character recognition and databases that can track you pretty much anywhere.
What we NEED is a court to rule that data-mining constitutes an ersatz search and is protected.
Any Onstar like system tracks you too, as well as being a bug (the mike can be remotely turned on) and a remote car control. Modern cell phones are all remote tracking, logging, bug devices. Several states are moving to make vehicle registration require location tracking, with permanent warrant-less tracking. (You can trust us! Really! Not like every other time this time, we promise Charlie Brown!)
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Several states are moving to make vehicle registration require location tracking, with permanent warrant-less tracking.
I don't think that everyone would just roll over for this yet. Yeah, 99% of the people would, but there are enough people (who would be branded as "terrorists") out there who would say no.
Warrantless examination of Internet usage (Score:3)
Do we not have a direct analogy between this ruling and warrantless examination of Internet usage - as does the NSA & others ?
So does this mean that the NSA needs a court order before it can collect any Internet use on anyone ? Ie the end to their current ''vacuum up everything'' way of doing things ?
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Do we not have a direct analogy between this ruling and warrantless examination of Internet usage - as does the NSA & others ?
So does this mean that the NSA needs a court order before it can collect any Internet use on anyone ? Ie the end to their current ''vacuum up everything'' way of doing things ?
The NSA has a valid court order. The problem is that the order was issued in complete secrecy, by a secret, non-adversarial court whose actions can never be challenged by the innocent but insignificant citizens whose privacy was actually violated, because, uh... Well, that's a secret.
And no, this is not something from a Kafka novel, it's the system we actually have here in the USA, brought to you courtesy of Osama Bin Laden and a bunch of spineless politicians on both sides of the aisle.
Thank Goodnesss some sense.... (Score:5, Interesting)
.... has returned to someone in the Judicial system.
It's ridiculous that the government bitches about getting a warrant. GPS is more invasive in my opinion. Because if you are a person of interest and the Govt, feels that you should be tracked, then they slap that GPS unit on your vehicle and they will step onto your property to do it in many cases. So in the event that they're not parked outside your house watching your every move, they don't always know who's driving that vehicle. So in essence, if you lent your car to someone that is NOT a person of interest the government is now tracking the wrong person and violating his/her rights.
As least with a warrant, the request is on papers and the government could back up their tracking with that warrant should the 'person not of interest' have balls big enough to go after the government.
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Who needs GPS when you have license plate tracking cameras?
I'm an opponent of license plates these days specifically because these devices require no warrants to store, track, and otherwise use that data. It was one thing when they had to manually read a plate, but these systems go too far.
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Well duh... (Score:2)
The answer was obvious. We need a way to fast track issues like this to the SCOTUS and force them to rule on them. How many people sat in prison for years due to this crooked process while law enforcement stalled it in court?
Establishing Probable Cause (Score:4, Interesting)
To me, the following bits from the article really strike to the heart of the matter:
The government also argued that if officers were required to obtain a warrant and have probable cause prior to executing a GPS search, "officers could not use GPS devices to gather information to establish probable cause, which is often the most productive use of such devices."
The justices said the government's statement "wags the dog rather vigorously," noting that the primary reason for a search cannot be to generate evidence for law enforcement purposes. They also noted that "Generally speaking, a warrantless search is not rendered reasonable merely because probable cause existed that would have justified the issuance of a warrant."
That seems to cast a dark shadow on the practice of NSA intercepts being used by the DEA to establish probable cause, followed by parallel construction [wikipedia.org] of that probable cause.
Some do have warrants (Score:2)
Police still have some wiggle room here (Score:2)
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals gave a resounding yes to that question today in a 2 to 1 decision.
I wonder what the arguments were on the other side. Especially in light of this:
the Supreme Court justices ruled in January 2012 that law enforcement’s installation of a GPS device on a target’s vehicle constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment. The justices declined to rule at the time, however, on whether such a search was unreasonable and therefore required a warrant.
I suppose one justice thought that even though it was a search, it was not unreasonable.
So there is still wiggle room here for the police. Perhaps other jurisdictions will decide differently. Or perhaps, the search is reasonable in some cases but not others.
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So there is still wiggle room here for the police. Perhaps other jurisdictions will decide differently. Or perhaps, the search is reasonable in some cases but not others.
A search _is_ reasonable in some cases and not in others. The police can sometimes search your home without a warrant (if there is a crime in progress or similar), so obviously they can sometimes track your car without a warrant. It's just a rare situation.
So they start tracking you directly... (Score:1)
Big Deal. Drones will do it for them. (Score:2)
They are doing this now because soon there will be well enough established drone networks that will make attaching something to the vehicle irrelevant.
No need for a search warrant if your movements are in plain sight in public. They don't need a warrant to follow you in a car either.
With good cameras, and some good processing, they'll be able to spot, track, and follow many vehicles at once with an automated system. Parts of it will be on the ground with plate readers and cameras, and parts of it will b