Appeals court limits use of GPS to track suspects

[kpete]

Source: Washington Post

Appeals court limits use of GPS to track suspects

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 7, 2010

A federal appeals court ruled for the first time Friday that police cannot use a Global Positioning System device to track a person's movements for an extended time without a warrant, clearing the way for the Supreme Court to decide the privacy impact of the new surveillance technology in products such as cellphones and vehicle-navigation systems.

The decision, by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, created a split with federal circuit courts in New York and California that have upheld warrantless GPS tracking of a vehicle by law enforcement. Feeding the national debate, a half-dozen state courts have issued conflicting rulings, while police across the country embrace GPS tools in hunting drug dealers, sexual predators and violent criminals.

In striking down the drug conviction of Antoine Jones, former co-owner of a District nightclub called Levels, the D.C. court said the FBI and District police overstepped their authority by tracking his movements round-the-clock for four weeks, placing a GPS monitoring device on his Jeep after an initial warrant had expired.

U.S. Circuit Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg, writing for a unanimous and ideologically diverse panel that included judges David S. Tatel and Thomas B. Griffith, said such surveillance technology represents a leap forward in potential government intrusion that violates constitutional protections against unreasonable searches.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...

[customerserviceguy]

1. There might be a difference

between using a GPS device that police attached to a car (or even a person, if that's someday possible) and tracking GPS-enabled devices that a suspect already freely uses. Since the GPS system was put in place by government-launched satellites, using it (especially for 'free') might imply that you consent to be watched in your use of it.

It might be held to be as legal as having highway patrol cars on a Federally-funded Interstate highway.

[skepticscott]

2. While there are certainly serious privacy issues

arising from this use of the technology, it seems a bit of a stretch to apply the 4th Amendment to it. While the legality of even placing such a device on someone's car seems fishy, is this really a "search" in any way that the 4th Amendment intends? The issue has probably been raised in the previous decisions (too lazy to read them all right now), but this seems no different in principle than having a person tailed by car or on foot 24 hours a day which, as far as I know, is perfectly legal and requires no warrant.

[maddezmom]

3. duplicate topic

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...