GPS Tracking by Law Enforcement: Agree or Disagree

[Jesda]

is this almost similar to Onstar tracking?

http://thenewamerican.com/tech-mainmenu ... -to-police

not just limited to GM vehicles, but to any make/model with Onstar on it? -- subscribed to the service or not, it's still on your vehicle for them to track you???

Yank the telematics fuse

[Dattebayo]

Search warrants plain and simple. Not everyone is a suspect.

You get searched when you go through any Airport. You have to go through a metal detector in a lot of schools in America. There are hundreds of examples of safety for the masses outweighing what you THINK you're entitled to in a public place.

The parts of airports that you have to be searched to go into are not public places, in fact, they're private places.
Federal regulations are the reason you get searched.
Schools aren't public places either, despite their name sometimes.
And not that many schools require a metal detector. I'd go so far as to say most do not require that.

Most of the time, when you park your car in a lot, it's a private lot unless it specifically says it's a county lot or something. This means that the people who own it could post a sign warning you of any photography or tracking of some kind, and you couldn't fight it. This is the only way sh*t like this would fly. But only as long as you were in that lot.

[IBCoupe]

So, I've had an opportunity to really examine this holding, and each of the concurring opinions. If I get a chance to post before Criminal Procedure tonight, I'll give you my understanding, and then I'll make any corrections I discover in class tonight when I get a chance, probably tomorrow night.

The bottom line of my examination, basically: don't get excited. If you think you love this holding, you probably don't. If you think you hate this holding, you probably don't.

[hannibal]

Speed cameras in DC are monitored by a cop. The transportable camera sits on a tripod on the shoulder and theres always someone in a vehicle about 10 yards behind it.

[Mr1der]

I agree with Scalia. It would be one thing to follow the guy themselves, but GPS records his data electronically and violates his privacy.

should fall under the same rules a wiretap does.

I agree with it being an invasion of privacy.

now, using GPS off someone's cell phone if they're running, I have no problem with that...though I honestly don't know if that's realistically feasible.

[s0m3th1ngAZ]

Matters very little to me. Heck, I'll go one further, I wouldn't mind it if all new cars came with a mandatory GPS that you had to register with the DMV, which would chart your speed in any given location and automatically issue speeding tickets. Revenue would go through the roof (meaning less taxes for such) and the roads would become safer. You could also have telemetry that would be able to give a lot more details to accident sites to determine cause and fault.

I do not care if the government knows I'm going to Target once every two weeks to buy cat litter or that I make weekly travels to and from the airport. I'm not doing anything shady so I have nothing to hide. There is no privacy to invade because nothing I'm doing is private.

You do realize you come across as a bigot in every one of you posts right?
You may want to live in a glass house with your junk swinging around for all to see, but the vast majority of the population (the criminals among them a very tiny portion) do not in any way shape or form.

[Bubba1]

You do realize you come across as a bigot in every one of you posts right?
You may want to live in a glass house with your junk swinging around for all to see, but the vast majority of the population (the criminals among them a very tiny portion) do not in any way shape or form.

Hey, he's no bigot. I'm sure he has no objection to women or men of any race, creed or sexual orientation watching him parade around nekkid in a glass house. (just tryin' to help, Jim )


Actually I don't see anything he said as being "bigoted." I believe he's simply saying if you feel you have nothing to hide and you're in public, why would it matter if some part of the government sees it?

[Mr1der]

if that's how you view it, then they'll feel it's there business to further monitor anything you do.

[Razi]

Don't committing thought crimes.

[s0m3th1ngAZ]

You do realize you come across as a bigot in every one of you posts right?
You may want to live in a glass house with your junk swinging around for all to see, but the vast majority of the population (the criminals among them a very tiny portion) do not in any way shape or form.

Hey, he's no bigot. I'm sure he has no objection to women or men of any race, creed or sexual orientation watching him parade around nekkid in a glass house. (just tryin' to help, Jim )


Actually I don't see anything he said as being "bigoted." I believe he's simply saying if you feel you have nothing to hide and you're in public, why would it matter if some part of the government sees it?

I realize the argument being made, and I meant bigot in the "intolerance of other opinions and wishes" sense.
It's only a matter o time before this happens anyways. It's already acceptable for insurance companies to voluntarily do it and how long until that price reduction goes away and it's a requirement?

[flohtingPoint]

Matters very little to me. Heck, I'll go one further, I wouldn't mind it if all new cars came with a mandatory GPS that you had to register with the DMV, which would chart your speed in any given location and automatically issue speeding tickets. Revenue would go through the roof (meaning less taxes for such) and the roads would become safer. You could also have telemetry that would be able to give a lot more details to accident sites to determine cause and fault.

I do not care if the government knows I'm going to Target once every two weeks to buy cat litter or that I make weekly travels to and from the airport. I'm not doing anything shady so I have nothing to hide. There is no privacy to invade because nothing I'm doing is private.

You do realize you come across as a bigot in every one of you posts right?
You may want to live in a glass house with your junk swinging around for all to see, but the vast majority of the population (the criminals among them a very tiny portion) do not in any way shape or form.

I have strong opinions so in your eyes I'm a bigot, sounds like your problem, not mine. When you put in as much time as I have working with the Department of Defense and deploy to warzones for two tours of duty, you might be able to see the big picture for the greater good too. It's not you're fault you have a dim world view, not everyone has worldly experience and has seen first hand whats on the other side of the fence.

The parts of airports that you have to be searched to go into are not public places, in fact, they're private places.
Federal regulations are the reason you get searched.
Schools aren't public places either, despite their name sometimes.
And not that many schools require a metal detector. I'd go so far as to say most do not require that.

Most of the time, when you park your car in a lot, it's a private lot unless it specifically says it's a county lot or something. This means that the people who own it could post a sign warning you of any photography or tracking of some kind, and you couldn't fight it. This is the only way sh*t like this would fly. But only as long as you were in that lot.

You couldn't be more mistaken. You've horribly screwed up the meaning of "private", I believe what you're meaning to say (or at least hope you're meaning to say) is "restricted" which has a completely different meaning, especially in the fiscal sense. Having guarded airports after 9/11 and helped setup the Air National Guard on location to get them ready to be activated, it's fair to say that I have a much greater understanding of the inner-workings of an airport than a loser whose life accomplishment is trolling a Nissan board. They are public, but (like anything) they just have restrictions. There is nothin that is 100% open to anything, that's life.

[Jesda]

I have strong opinions so in your eyes I'm a bigot, sounds like your problem, not mine. When you put in as much time as I have working with the Department of Defense and deploy to warzones for two tours of duty, you might be able to see the big picture for the greater good too. It's not you're fault you have a dim world view, not everyone has worldly experience and has seen first hand whats on the other side of the fence.

That appears to be your limitation, differentiating my private space from a war zone.

[MinisterofDOOM]

I do not care if the government knows I'm going to Target once every two weeks to buy cat litter or that I make weekly travels to and from the airport. I'm not doing anything shady so I have nothing to hide. There is no privacy to invade because nothing I'm doing is private.

This viewpoint is exactly the problem, though. There are 300 million people in the US, and you're ONE of them. YOU might not care, but many do. When the breach of privacy becomes an issue to those people, imposing it on them is not okay simply because YOU don't care.

As for your war comments...I have never served in the miliary and wouldn't last if I tried. I have no delusions about that. But when the purpose of the military is specifically to protect those very people who are at risk of being imposed upon, I think your outlook is a little skewed. You may have better perspective, but the results don't change. The entire world is NOT a constant warzone, and treating it as such is the perfect way to change that. Safety is important, but this isn't an either/or situation: we don't have to pick happy or safe. We can balance a measure of each. There are, however, certain lines that, when crossed, set precedents. And the repercussions of that need to be considered.

I'm an imperialist, and am only 1/4 joking when I talk about how I wish I were emperor so I could fix the world, so I absolutely understand your "greater good" viewpoint. But there's no single right answer to anything involving humanity. Extremism from any approach is dangerous and--worse--inadequate.

On a tangent, I do have a very hard time listening to complaints of privacy invasion from the same populace that feels it necessary to tell Facebook every time they take a dump.

[Bubba1]

On a tangent, I do have a very hard time listening to complaints of privacy invasion from the same populace that feels it necessary to tell Facebook every time they take a dump.

LOL, I've always wondered the same thing.

As far as required GPS tracking, I think there's room in the middle without resorting to government requirements. There are certainly many like Jim who have no issue if Uncle Sam can track them this particular way as they already can track us in so many other ways (like cell phones, EZpass, credit/debit cards transactions, on-star, lo-jack, etc etc.), and see the value of being tracked if their car gets stolen, for example. I can also see just as many folks that prefer to stay as far off the government's radar as possible. At the end of the day, I suspect the requirement being discussed will be too expensive to implement and monitor to get passed before we even get to the "should they do it" argument.

[Dattebayo]

You couldn't be more mistaken. You've horribly screwed up the meaning of "private", I believe what you're meaning to say (or at least hope you're meaning to say) is "restricted" which has a completely different meaning, especially in the fiscal sense.

Not all airports are entirely municipal sometimes the wings themselves are owned privately. This is what I was referring to, that you get into a privately owned area after the check-in. And thanks for being so nice about it.

Having guarded airports after 9/11 and helped setup the Air National Guard on location to get them ready to be activated, it's fair to say that I have a much greater understanding of the inner-workings of an airport than a loser whose life accomplishment is trolling a Nissan board. They are public, but (like anything) they just have restrictions. There is nothin that is 100% open to anything, that's life.

Would you quit it already? Why can't you discuss things like usual without turning them into some kind of assault? Seriously, you attacked ME. Go fu*k with someone else.

[AZhitman]

While I disagree with Jim's position 100%, I don't think it makes him a "bigot" or intolerant of other views. I'd defend his right to hold that viewpoint as valiantly as he's defended mine.

The minute people think they have "nothing to hide" is the very moment they'll criminalize something else.

AND, even if I'm NOT doing something wrong, I'm not interested in wasting precious hours of my awesome life explaining myself to some dimwitted government official or disrupting my (and my family's) schedule to assert my innocence. I don't trust our Administration any further than I can toss it.

If I wanted to be watched continuously, I'd move to China or Russia.

Here's where we've gotten off-track:

Checking me for concealed weapons before I enter a place where I could do a lot of damage *with* a concealed weapon is a LOT different than monitoring my every move without my express consent. By buying an airline ticket, I consent to search. By entering a school, I consent to passing through the metal detector. By attending a concert, I consent to having my bags checked for contraband.

Violate my privacy at your own peril. It's as dear to me as my wife and kids, as my next breath. My family and my freedom are the only things I'd be willing to die for.

BTW, as much as I dislike Dave, nothing he said warranted that kind of attack. Hope you're just having a bad day, Jim.

[S133P3R]

Civil Liberties? those are so third world rebelion!
i guess the smoke screen and tire spikes i just installed will be futile against da GPS. time to get all SCARFACE... and you thought he was just paranoid "scanners for the satellites"!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNzF-P9QLZs[/youtube]

[Rev_D21]

Also remember that not all government officials are human, some are depraved sex offenders that haven't been caught yet. Imagine if the abductor of your child tracked him/her using government surveillance? How would that extra security be working out for you then?

[Bubba1]

Also remember that not all government officials are human, some are depraved sex offenders that haven't been caught yet. Imagine if the abductor of your child tracked him/her using government surveillance? How would that extra security be working out for you then?

Playing devil's advocate, imagine the authorities not being permitted to use that same technology to help capture that abductor more quickly.

[IBCoupe]

Okay, so now that I've had a chance to think more and I have a lull in my current class, I can go ahead and elaborate on the U.S. v. Jones opinion, even though it looks like much of you have moved on. First, some historical context:

Way back when, it used to be that a "search" was a "Fourth Amendment search" when the police, had they been private persons, would have committed some tort of trespass against you, had they been private parties. Simply stepping onto your property, absent a warrant or probable cause, would have rendered any evidence discovered in that act inadmissible in court. Similarly, if they spotted marijuana in your basement, and then went back and got a warrant to search your basement, because the unconstitutional search formed the basis for their warrant, any information gathered in the search-by-warrant would be inadmissible. Neat, huh?

Well, technology advanced, and so did the law. In 1968 (I think), the case of U.S. v. Katz came up. Katz wandered into a phone booth, shut the door behind him, picked up the phone and placed some illegal bets. Attached to the glass of the phone booth was a device designed to pick up voice from inside the phone booth. Even if we were to say that Katz had a possessory interest in the interior of the phone booth, the device did not actually invade his space. No tort in 1791 (the year the Constitution was enacted - yes, this is how Justices Scalia and Thomas see the world) would have covered this action. So what did the Supreme Court do? They improvised and declared that the old test simply did not keep up with the intent of the Fourth Amendment, and because Katz had a reasonable expectation of privacy, actually perceived by Katz and actually respected by society, the invasion of that privacy constituted a Fourth Amendment search.

And that was the law. That's what police (or really, the prosecutors telling them what to do) understood. That's what defense attorneys understood. That's what the world understood. Fast forward to the 21st century: we've got two kinds of GPS tracking devices. Why? Because cops suck at surveillance. They can be good at a lot of things, but they are absolute dumbasses when it comes to surveillance. An anecdote: one prosecutor got a phone call from the police ordered to perform a tail. The conversation went something like this:

"Hello?"
"Hi. We've followed the subject."
"Okay."
"...into his driveway."
"What?"
"His driveway."
"No, really. What?"
"His driveway."
"You're kidding."
"I think we're made."
"YOU THINK?"
"So..."
"You should get out of there, now."

Anyways, the first kind of GPS tracker police have at their disposal is simply slapped onto a bumper. They can be as small as a credit card and are battery powered. The batteries run out, and they need to be replaced from time to time. They often don't work. But because they're often done in public parking lots (no reasonable expectation of privacy, right?) and they're not really invasive, police & prosecutors believed for decades that warrants weren't necessary. The second kind of tracker was hard-wired into the car and used the car's own battery as a power source. It was generally accepted that the police need a warrant to install this.

In this case, police had a warrant to place the first kind of tracker. The warrant was good in Washington, D.C., and it was good for ten days. But the guy didn't really park the car in D.C., so that sucked. Instead, the police found the car (a Jeep Grand Cherokee, in Jones' wife's name) parked in a public parking lot in Maryland on the 11th day. They planted the device, and later came back to replace the battery. But everyone involved (you know, except the target) genuinely believed that no warrant was necessary.

Trial comes, and the debate on the interblags is all about whether Jones had a reasonable expectation of privacy on the underside of his (wife's) Jeep in a public parking lot. Nobody predicted what happened next:

Now we're at the Supreme Court, and Justice Scalia is announcing the opinion of the Court. It doesn't matter whether he had a reasonable expectation of privacy, says Scalia, because the police trespassed against his chattel. Because they went and touched his (wife's) Jeep, they needed a warrant. The attachment of the GPS tracker and its subsequent use constituted a Fourth Amendment search.

Things Justice Scalia did not answer:
Did police have probable cause? (It was never asserted below, and so the Court refused to entertain it now - up to this point, the government insisted it didn't need a warrant)
Is GPS tracking, without the initial trespass, similarly verboten? This is what Justices Sotomayor and Alito wanted Scalia to address.

Justice Alito's opinion goes about disassembling Justice Scalia's reasoning (it wouldn't be a trespass in our modern understanding of the tort, as damage would be described; he wouldn't have had a cause of action under a tort because it was his wife's Jeep in our modern understanding of the tort) and simultaneously arguing that (a) long-term GPS tracking, regardless of how it's initiated, is probably a Fourth Amendment search, but that (b) short-term GPS tracking is probably okay.

Justice Sotomayor's opinion, on the other hand, is similarly dismissive of Justice Scalia, but less meticulously. Justice Sotomayor would have us not only require a warrant for both short- and long-term GPS tracking regardless of the way it's initiated, but she also advocates the reconsideration of the "Third Party Doctrine."

The Third Party doctrine is, at its simplest level, this: anything available to third parties is available to the police. If you buy a car with OnStar, you give them your location voluntarily. So can the police track you indefinitely? If you have a smartphone, you give the cell phone providers your location voluntarily. So can the police track you indefinitely?

Justice Sotomayor's suggestion is certainly radical, and nobody else bought onto it. But keep an eye on it; it might show up in the next 15 years, and it would have huge ramifications if adopted. For example, almost all of our white collar crime prosecution is entirely dependent upon the third party rule. Why? Because banks are third parties, and any transaction with a bank is a transaction with a third party. Regardless of your "reasonable expectation of privacy," the third party doctrine gets that information into police hands without a warrant. Were the doctrine to disappear, it might be a huge victory for many other fields of privacy, but it might be a major blow to much of our existing criminal justice system.

One final note: while the Court did not address whether GPS tracking, long-term or otherwise, was itself subject to the limitations of the Fourth Amendment, there were five Justices (Sotomayor + Alito, and the three Justices signing on with him) who would have ruled that the Constitution requires a warrant for long-term GPS tracking. Expect to see action on that in the next few years.

[S133P3R]

....

awesome info, thanks for the clifnotes!

[Rev_D21]

Also remember that not all government officials are human, some are depraved sex offenders that haven't been caught yet. Imagine if the abductor of your child tracked him/her using government surveillance? How would that extra security be working out for you then?

Playing devil's advocate, imagine the authorities not being permitted to use that same technology to help capture that abductor more quickly.

I agree, it's a tricky balance.

[IBCoupe]

It's not all that tricky. Remember, there's always the possibility that they could go with a warrant or they could operate upon probable cause.

[AZhitman]

Thanks Isaac. I enjoy those types of posts and insights.

Several years ago, when I worked for the Supreme Court, one of my functions (aside from oversight of the 15 county probation departments) was to monitor and oversee the state fleet (the portion designated for PO's and SO's), roughly 850 vehicles. These were used for surveillance and as such, were undercover-plated, generic fleet rides.

Anyway, a company came to us pitching a GPS monitor with real-time data tracking via the Internet (they were branching out from the long-haul trucking fleet industry into other promising areas, such as law enforcement).

Although we had no intention of purchasing the service, I got authorization to test the units (their offer) and arranged a test involving 5 units and coordinated the install on 5 randomly-selected vehicles while the cars were in for scheduled maintenance, and began tracking them immediately. After 2 weeks, I pulled the dispatch logs for those 5 officers as well as their field notes. FOUR of the five were substantially misrepresenting their whereabouts, which was not only a safety issue, but worthy of disciplinary action.

Three of the four grieved their personnel action (not a court of law, so of course the same rules of procedure didn't necessarily apply). The Administrative Law Judge dismissed all three cases. Two filed wrongful termination lawsuits, which were also summarily dismissed in Superior Court. (the one who didn't grieve his personnel action was reinstated with a suspension w/o pay).

Anyhow, my job was easy in these cases, because the cars were owned by the State, and the drivers had no reasonable expectation of privacy.

Dunno why I shared that, since it's totally irrelevant. Don't mind me, just rambling.

[S133P3R]

Dunno why I shared that, since it's totally irrelevant. Don't mind me, just rambling.

love stories when The Man sticks it to himself, take that The Man.