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No Warrant Needed For GPS Tracking By Police
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."
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.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
great, now i can take off my tin foil hat because I'm going to have to cover my entire vehicle in tinfoil!!
so when will law enforcement start monitoring IP addresses of slashdot posters?
Search your car to find out if you win.
If the police can do this, does this mean that your wife/husband can do this sort of thing and figure out who you've been spending "quality" time with?
OK, so now what's going to stop police from hiding GPS units on many cars parked on the street in high crime neighborhoods and tracking thousands of potential suspects?
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
If a man exposes himself to a woman he gets fined/jail time.
If a woman exposes herself to a man she gets whatever she wants!
The way the Judge's comments are phrased, he's giving the green light for anyone to sneak a GPS tracker on his vehicle and track him around.
May I suggest a web site with a map and his whereabouts every minute of the day?
It is akin to planting a bug in my car. Last I checked you need a warrant to plant a bug.
If you want to track my whereabouts, go right ahead and spend the manpower to have a human being follow me. But don't start putting tracking devices in/on my property(car) without due process.
"knowing only the location of the coffee shop and that it was a snow plow operator, could find his exact whereabouts."
Of course, all they had to do was follow the plowed streets.
Is it legal, then, for us to mount gps devices on police cruisers to keep track of their location? By their logic, we could do it anyway with coordinated visual tracking.
is Mr Plow.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
From TFA:
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.
I'd prefer that ANYTHING placed by the police in a private vehicle require a court order...
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
Not just for the Tin Foil hat crowd. Those who are criminally inclined may find a GPS Jammer handy. Though this does violate FCC regulations. But hey when you committing a crime, does breaking one more law matter?
What could possibly go wrong?
Does a person have a reasonable expectation that their car's location is private? I don't know. I'd certainly want more than a single NY judge's opinion on the subject before saying "no", though.
But what I am reasonably sure of is that a person has the right to expect that their car, their property, has not been tampered with or had anything introduced to it without their permission. Now, this isn't the case with the snowplow driver (as it is not his vehicle), but idea that somebody can just "sneak" an item onto a personal vehicle, any item, bothers me.
If the vehicle is owned by me, I believe they should have to have a warrant to place one on/in my car. However, if the vehicle is leased (think Rent a Car) or owned by my employer, then the owner of the vehicle should make the decision about the GPS. If the GPS is installed by the owner such as Rent a Car, the police should be required to get a court order to get the tracking info. If no GPS is installed, the owner of the vehicle should be served the warrant. I.E.: Warrant is served to Rent a Car if the driver is a suspect. I guess then Rent a Car has the decision of notifying the driver about the GPS.
"It's a dog eat dog world out there, and I'm wearing Milk-Bone underwear."- Norm (from Cheers)
You're using a company vechile, they can and should keep track of these things. If one went missing and happened to come back into a country full of drugs/child prostitutes/whatever, they are the ones in trouble.
I like muppets.
Are the police really allowed to fuck with my car without a warrant or my knowledge?
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.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
i remember the good ol' days before GPS when a guy could expose himself to girls in coffee shops and have no fear of being apprehended. it seems the glory days are gone because our privacy rights have been totally overrun! what's next? stopping terrorist acts before they occur?!?!?
There's always warnings issued about exposure during the winter months ... nobody ever seems to listen.
I worked in the freight/logistics industry and our drivers of linehaul rigs had GPS and satellite phones. Primary reason was to identify location to anticipate time of arrival, secondary was safety of crews, if the truck were hijacked (a frequent occurance you seldom hear about.)
Careful you don't associate the snowplow driver's arrest with implied conviction. He's likely only been arrested as a suspect.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Some kinds of limits need imposed, just as in most places a cop can't follow you 12 miles to see if you break any traffic laws. The question isn't if it's legal to do to some extent, the question is what is the appropriate extent? What are the limits of public surveilance and privacy?
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.
It is not our abilities that show what we truly are... it is our choices.
> "We're in a world where more and more of our activities can be viewed in public and...be correlated and linked together."
Well, of course. But if we had 100,000,000 cops on duty, they could follow you and trade notes, and no warrant would be required.
GPS is merely a force multiplier. If the EFF guy has a problem with this, I'd encourage him to Read The Fucking Fourth Amendment, and actually pay attention to what it says about what you can poke at without a warrant:
"Persons." "Houses." "Papers." "Effects." Whereabouts of vehicles, wherein the vehicles are registered to the government, the privilege of driving said vehicles is granted by government, and in a country in which the vehicles are driven on roads built by the government and maintained by the government.
One of these things is not like the other. One of these things does not belong.
Privacy is dead. Get over it. But if you don't like it, don't look to the constitution for a right to it, because it ain't there.
I mean, in this particular case, it should have been a no-brainer for a judge to approve a court order. If the goal is to get the bad guys, why not work with the current system instead of giving the bad guys legal loopholes?
If you use the argument that well LF can visually tail you, therefore a GPS is o.k. then govt will always get what they want. You just do it slowly. Now that GPS is o.k. then really Onstar keeps records of where you are so since I can tail you with my own GPS I should be able to get those records without a court order etc.etc. Besides as someone else said. Wonder what would happen if I as a citizen purchase a GPS device and put it on my town mayors car and publish where she goes for everyone too see. After all .. they shouldn't have any expectation of privacy should they? /Mike.
A GPS device is placed on the truck, probably by its legal owner. The operator of the snowplow, probably a public employee, commits a crime while using the vehicle. The police use the GPS locator, with the likely cooperation of the owner of the vehicle, to find out who committed the crime.
Makes sense to me. What does the submitter mean "But I don't buy that"? This is supposed to be controversial?
Wait a minute. This is Slashdot. Information wants to be free. I'm sure that the woman in the coffee shop has a lot more information that she wanted.
Floating face-down in a river of regret...and thoughts of you...
Since turnabout is fair play we can now tag all the police cars and never get speeding fines again.
Beep beep.
as technology advances if it would be posible to atach micro gps locaors on people and would the police need warrents for that or if they would legal at all... Scary stuff...
Don't you think parent's argument is... well... not helping? I mean, it could help to rally the American Trucker-Flashers Union (ATFU) against the ruling but...
If there is no expectation of privacy on public highways, suppose I place GPS tracking devices on all marked police cars in my area? I bet the police would have a very LARGE problem with that.
-Matt
If we all couldn't enjoy a self-exposing snow plow operator from time to time?
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
But they should put them in everycar... not be selective.... then we can get devices to show us where the cop cars are... If they cops know where I am, I should know where the cops are.
- Your stupidity got you into this mess, why can't it get you out? -Will Rogers
"Not all uses are controversial. Trucking outfits..."
Well, duh. A company can do whatever it wants with the vehicles it owns, including putting tracking devices on them.
But this case is about police "bugging" a private vehicle. I think if they want to vandalize private property, they should need to get a warrant first.
What if I spray-paint the side of a police building, so I can track its movement more easily? Is that okay? After all, just like "Law enforcement personnel could have conducted a visual surveillance of the vehicle as it traveled on the public highways," I could have conducted a visual surveillance of the police building without spray-painting it.
$8.95/mo web hosting
First in Slashdot: 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.
/.'s bar ever lowers.
Then in the article: Police suspected the lawyer of ties to a local Hells Angels Motorcycle Club that was selling methamphetamine, and they feared undercover officers would not be able to infiltrate the notoriously tight-knit group, which has hazing rituals that involve criminal activities.
Only reason I guess CNET's writing is still better than Slashdot's is
The judge apparently said that the police could have performed visual surveillance anyway and didn't need a court order. I'm sorry, but there is quite a thick line between watching someone and physically modifying his car. And the argument about the suspect's not having any expectation of privacy is also quite a dangerous precedent to set. Does this mean I can also go and plant tracking devices on people's cars and mini-cameras on the windscreen of armored vehicles? They have as little expectation as privacy as that dude did I guess.
Or is it only reserved for the police when they feel like arbritrarily invading people's privacy spheres - bceause they can make all the arguments they want - but that's what they've done.
If this device was connected to his car then he would have been using his gasoline to transport it. If this was done without permission, the police have stolen (even if only a miniscule amount of) gasoline from him.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
"Law enforcement personnel could have conducted a visual surveillance of the vehicle as it traveled on the public highways" .. but they DIDNT!
The point is not that they surveilled him, but that they physically attatched a device to his vehichle which is where they invaded his privacy.
...it's about planting a device on my car for later use against me. If we allow this, could the next device be a concealed tape recorder or other device to monitor my conversations since it is legal to listen to what I say? Since it is as legal to watch a house as it is to track a car, does this mean it is similarly legal to put monitoring devices in the home without my knowledge or permission?
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.
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.
This isn't really an issue of where you can go with a reasonable expectation of privacy, its a question of can the police do something to your car without a warrent? And can they 'search' or follow you without telling you? I always thought that if the police wanted to search you, you had a right to know what they were searching for, but if you don't know theres a search then how can you know what its for?
Can I stick a fridge magnet on your car?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Perhaps, those who feel that this is a fine practice can explain to me, then, why court orders are required for bugs, wiretaps, and the like. Does information you transmit off your property, over the phone lines, have "no reasonable expectation of privacy?" Clearly, the courts have decided differently, and warrants are required for police to covertly plant such technological surveillance devices.
I don't see this as any different. The police could, for example, track your whereabouts with one of these devices even when you are in a private location (for example, an enclosed garage), or when you are out of their jurisdiction. If they have a court order to do this, that is acceptable. If they do not, this would be far too great a power with far too little oversight.
It sounds like, in most of these cases, a court order/warrant could have been obtained by the police. If it becomes permissible for police agencies to place these devices without suspicion or warrant, what is, in theory, to stop them from planting such devices on every vehicle in existence, and randomly monitoring your activities? This is the reason for mandatory oversight by the courts-it is a check and balance on the power of the executive, law-enforcement branch of government. We advocate removing that check at our own peril.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
What was that, your typical think-of-the-children response?
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.
If you're out on the road, the officer wants to stop you, and the police 'tag' your car with some kind of tracking device (whether GPS, etc) to track and stop you instead of risking a high speed chase, or pursuing a fleeing suspect, I'm for it.
However, if the police have to come onto private premises in order to tag your car, I say they need a warrant.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
no expectation of privacy in the whereabouts of his vehicle on a public roadway,
What about the expectation that we be free from unlawful search, entry, and seizure of our private property?
IF they tack it on underneath somhow that would be one thing, but to enter the vehicle and install it would seem to be clearly unconstitutional in the US.
By the same reasoning, how about someone planting gps devices on police cruisers in a small town, then tracking their location? If it is only the expectation of privacy that should keep cops from doing such things,then that would seem reasonable, since the location of a cop car is also very obvious and visible in public.
And what if the owner has a scanner that would find there gps tracking devices, can they have them, or will the cops come after them claiming the person stole the device?
Actually I have heard of someone who has done something like it, except it wasn't a gps device it was a simple beacon and they had a radio scanner connected to a laptop that would somehow calculate the approximate the distance to the beacon(s). But I should run since the cops are probably planing a gps device on my car already.
A GPS is just a satellite signal receiver. There is no way to be tracked by GPS. So I guess we are more exactly talking about a GPS receiver plus some kind of transmitter (radio, mobile phone, etc.).
This is putting a device on a vehicle. If *I* did something like this, I'd expect to be put in Jail. Since this is the case, the LEO's need to have a friggin' warrant, per the FOURTH AMMENDMENT to do something along those lines since it's technically searching. It's analogous to a damn voice bug or a video camera in the vehicle or your house. You'd need a warrant for that, so why in the HELL is this any different?
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
It sounds like this is being used as an example of an illegitimate use of GPS tracking. Which I fail to see.
I do disagree with the judges ruling, but I don't see why the previous quote was necessary in the slashdot posting.
Blake
well, if the police are supposedly just using powers they could have had with an army of watcher patrol cars, thus it's legal; then it would go the other way, wouldn't it?
I'd take this to mean that private citizens (especially as the source of income and primary stakeholders in the quality of their police force) have the right to secretly put GPS monitoring devices on police cars, and then do as they wish with that information, so long as they don't break any other laws in the process. For example, maybe publically post the information they find. I'd like to think random monitoring of cops (and hey, how about other possibly corrupt government officials: FBI, Governor, DMV, etc..) should be undertaken by citizens.
Go to it!
Maybe if he was operating at 100%, the woman would've been impressed instead of repulsed.
No, no it's not. It's completely different. Even if you can't admit it, it's still different. Why?
Say it with me: EXPECTATION OF PRIVACY.
Let's take this to the next logical step...
Police planted a listening device into the suspect's car to tape conversations. A NY judge later ruled this was legal since "a person on a public road should have no expectation of privacy".
IF the police had followed the guy OR had a series of people watch for him and track him, that's one thing. PLANTING a bug (of any kind) is a wholly different matter.
Your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
At least Spider-Man won't have anything to worry about.
I don't see why this would be considered a 'controversal' use of GPS. Someone did something illegal, it made it easier to catch them. Would it have been better if the driver got away with it? (more likely it would have just taken them longer to catch them, as they'd have to go through all the snowplow companies individually).
I mean, its one thing to fine or get people in trouble for speeding - and really, that's up to the business owner if they're going to do that, since they do own the vehicles - but to help catch an actual criminal act is a good thing IMO.
Speak before you think
1. These devices exist anyhow, so your "potential for abuse" argument is invalid. Said sheriff could buy one and use it just as easily. Or, more likely, he could grab you up in the middle of the night and beat you severely.
2. Interfere with the function of the car? C'mon.
I read 1984. I have a question, is the scary part that your every move is being watched, or that your every move is being watched from a central location with little effort. High profile people (mobsters, presidents, movie stars) have had to worry about people following their every move for a long time. So is the scary part that they do it, or that its easy to do?
"brxref
These things aren't free, nor would the infrastructure to monitor a lot of them be free either.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Next thing you know, the police will be planting GPS trackers in houses. I had to say it before someone else said it by accident.
-
The police can tamper with my property, track my movements specifically, and keep it secret from me without a warrant?
This ruling spits in the face of the 4th. Amendment. I don't see how anyone could argue otherwise, and I hope that this ruling is thrown out by a judge in a higher court who actually still cares about civil liberties.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
What if I spray-paint the side of a police building, so I can track its movement more easily?
This is perhaps the worst analogy that's ever been written.
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!
How does the Slashdot Effect happen given that no slashdotters ever RTFA?
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.
Please help metamoderate.
For example, a cop can legally carry a gun into a bar. A cop can legally violate traffic laws. Hell, under the right circumstances a cop can even kill someone even if it's not direct self-defense. And, in this case, a cop can legally stick a magnetic GPS transponder on your ride.
In Russia, there is no such thing as police brutality, that's why when a cop in Russia asks you to do something, you do it because of fear of being beaten severily and then not be able to do anything. If you know that your car is outfitted with GPS and you want to do something stupid (rob a bank for example), then you will think twice about it.
just my 2 bytes
(And, really, it's just an extension of traffic cameras, which are equally objectionable to GPS-without-a-warrant.)
Mechanized tracking of the public is not police doing their job. It's police delegating their job to machines. If something is serious enough to track, it should be serious enough to assign a human being -- or at the very least, require a judge to authorize mechanized tracking. If we drop that requirement, then we end up with excess surveillance of the public.
And what's wrong with that? The potential for abuse by a government. We've already seen examples of Clinton and Bush deploying the IRS against its political enemies. Complete surveillance of anyone would be another taxpayer-funded tool of the incumbant to perpetuate his/her personal or party rule. Knowledge is power. If you know your political enemy is cheating on his/her spouse through surveillance logs, that political enemy is instantly destroyed. All it takes is an anonymous call to a tabloid -- no official announcement from the government surveillance agency is necessary.
In general, knowledge through surveillance enables control. Knowing every last detail of a political enemy allows an exploiter to innocuously apply martial arts-style precise pressure to make the enemy's life fall like a house of cards -- for example, slashing the tires on the enemy's car on the day of a critical secret meeting.
The difference between human tracking and machine tracking is the difference between manuscript-copying and the printing press, or between the printing press and the Internet, i.e., qualitative. As Douglas Engelbart has described this phenomenon:
Mechanized surveillance takes traditional surveillance to a new level, and puts too much power in the hands of the government to be used against those opposed to the government's policies. Government should be for the people, not control of the people through mechanized knowledge collection.You don't have the expectation of privacy, but if you are being followed, you have the expectation that you might be able to observe being observed.
You also don't have the expectation that someone will ENTER your property to place some tracking thing on or in it, even if they don't open up a lock and just pop it on the back some place, you don't have that expectation.
http://www.hawknest.com/
...with little or no effort.
You show me someone who has never broken a law and I'll show you catch all laws that could be used to destroy that person.
There has never been, nor never be a benevolent government. Let your tax return get lost by the IRS and see how nice they are.
Your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Our cars have license plates for a specific reason. At first, the police wanted every car to display the name of its registered owner in case the car was used in a crime as a getaway vehicle. But it was decided that this was a bit too intrusive, and instead license plates were developed. That way, it made it less convenient for authorities to get at the information, and thus the information would be less likely to undergo abuse for casual reasons. (Keep in mind that we're talking turn-of-the-century here. You couldn't just radio it in, call it in on a cell phone or look it up on a computer. It was a lot of work.)
The same problem comes up here. While no warrant would be needed for the police to follow someone around, the police WOULD have to account for their time to their supervisor, considering that every minute the suspect is under surveillance is a minute that the police are dedicated to the task of surveilling them. And right there, you've got one of the best checks against abuse; oversight by another person.
However, when you add a GPS tag to a vehicle, everything changes. These tags typically report in their whereabouts almost constantly via cell phone communications, and all you have to do to see where the tag has gone is look at a website. You can zoom in, zoom out, specify a past period of time, etc. And you don't spend a second of time except to look at the results. It's easy, requires no other people to be involved, and when you really think about it, you don't even need to tell the computer whose car it really went on. This is just begging for abuse, in my opinion, and meets the standard for something that requires supplementary oversight to curtail such abuse.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
I suppose this means that it would be OK to put GPS tracking devices on all the policecars in your town. They can't have an expectation of privacy when on a public roadway, right?
I'm sure the GPS info would be *mighty* valuable to certain criminal elements...
If the cops can put a GPS tracker device on my car without a warrant...
Then if I find it, I can take it apart and use it in my own projects because that fucker's mine!
If you have no expectation of privacy on the public road, where does that put unmarked patrol cars? Why should they remain anonymous?
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
to have a drive thru center that will check whether your car got bugs or not....
would it be illegal for a person to mount a GPS on a police cruiser?
More info here http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID =322152&category=REGIONOTHER&BCCode=HOME&newsdate= 1/11/2005
To me, the issue here isn't whether or not somebody has an expectation of privacy about where they're driving; it's whether this makes it too easy for the police to track a person.
Much has been made of the analogy of an unmarked car tailing you. But the difference is that having an unmarked car tail you is a significant commitment of resources. If you think you might have seen a guy with a hooker last week, you're not going to assign two cops and a car to follow him around for the next month in case he picks up another one.
But if all it takes is to attach a GPS tag to the bottom of his car and a computer in HQ will pop up a message if he visits a motel, well, why not? Meanwhile, this innocent guy is having his every move watched by the cops--and risking a police raid if a friend flies into town and asks for a ride from the motel to his room.
This is another step towards wholesale surveillance, which I truly consider to be one of the most troubling possibilities of our time. Wholesale surveillance would waste everybody's time, destroy privacy, and likely turn people into even dumber sheep than they already are.
Hey, you try to find an open nick these days!
Namely following behind the vehicle. The GPS doesn't do that. Legally, you're not allowed to touch my property without permission of the owner thereof- even the OUTSIDE of the property. If you're standing in my front yard and I tell you to leave and you don't, it's called criminal trespass which is at least a misdemeanor in most jurisdictions. As such, the act of planting a bug of any kind, including a GPS device, is something that could be considered criminal trespass. ANYTHING that constitutes that sort of thing under any other circumstances requires a warrant issued by a judge for that jurisdiction- or else it's a violation of the Fourth Ammendment or it's a criminal act perpetrated by the LEOs.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
If the GPS reciever is reporting position in real time, using some kind of transmitter, cell phone or otherwise, spoting it with a broad band field stregnth meter should be no problem. If I remove it and destroy it, will I be charged with stealing or destroying government property?
... when you drive past a highway speed trap and blink your lights to warn on-coming traffic.
It would fall under the blanket "obstruction of justice" law.
Your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Usually the telecoms industry gets the people for stealing the electricity... the difference being they are big business and he is one person; he probably would get laughed out of court :(
Better analogy: What if the cops spray-paint your car neon-pink to make it easier to track?
If the snow plow guy was caught minutes after the complaint was made to police maybe they found him simply because he'd only made it 13 meters down the road -- doesn't sound like GPS really made much difference here.
Privacy has no bearing on the Fourth Ammendment rights. It's part of it, but it's not what defines what is and isn't kosher for a LEO to do.
Legally speaking, you're not allowed to touch any property of someone without permission, even if it's in the public area. If it touches on Fourth Ammendment or other legal rights, including touching or tinkering with someone's property (putting ANY kind of bug on a vehicle falls under this category...) then it requires a warrant issued by a judge for it to be legit. I don't care what this other judge said, there's literally TONS of past precedent saying otherwise and the statement of "expectation of privacy" doesn't erase it. I'd love to see what the appeals look like on this on.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
What, you just clicked through it without reading it when you signed up for your driver's license?
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
I like it when criminals get caught.
Why shouldn't I love this?
Berto
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."
So, the police knew the phone number to call for the snow plow dispatch center and the dispatch center pulled up the plow nearest that address at that time all in a matter of minutes?! Wow. That's efficiency.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Well, being as how the Supreme Court long ago said that a lowjack used in this exact manner is constitutionally acceptable (Since you have no expectation of privacy of where your vehicle is when driving on public roads) GPS really is no different, I would not expect to see SCOTUS, or any appeals court for that matter do anything about this at all.
Smog equipment, seatbelts, etc.
You are responsible for securing your own privacy. The world is a big, ugly, potentially dangerous place, and you can never count on the law to protect privacy.
If you are leaking information all over the place, why is it that Big Brother is the only party who you are worried about? Demanding that He be honor-bound to not take advantage of it, is just treating the symptom. Everyone else, from organized crime, to oh-so-pleasant marketing researchers, to the PI that your wife hired to find out why you always smell like you took a shower when you were supposedly out bowling, can still pull this shit. If someone can put a tracker on your car, overzealous law enforcement is only one of your problems.
So what are you going to do about it? Close your eyes to the general danger and tell your elected government that they simply must be gentlemanly about it, and then declare the problem is solved? Or pull your head out and accept reality: you do not have privacy unless you take matters into your own hands and make sure you have privacy.
EFF, if you think privacy is important (and I know you do), then quit working on the regulations angle. Work on the deregulations angle. Let's go after the laws that require anti-privacy be built into tech (e.g. stuff like CALEA), and keep funding crypto-related software projects.
We'll have privacy not when Big Brother is required to follow rules to prevent peeking, but when we have the power and right to prevent anyone we want to, from peeking. And that power has to work, whether the peeker plays by any rules or not. If you address the general case, then you'll take care of Big Brother just as well.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
One of these things is not like the other. One of these things does not belong.
Privacy is dead. Get over it. But if you don't like it, don't look to the constitution for a right to it, because it ain't there.
As far as I can figure, the government doesn't own our automobiles. I don't think it is a stretch to call a car 'an effect'. It is privately owned. What if I have a motor home and live in it? Where is the line? Is it now cool to put GPS on a bike? Your shoes? Up your ass?
AFA your comment about privacy being dead. I won't get over it. If the police can get a court order to place GPS, then w00t for them, but if they don't need one, then I should be able to place GPS on their cars, or anyone else's. Like high profile congresswhores that like to hang out at slutty clubs in D.C.
When the sword fails to cut both ways, that's when we have a problem.
So following this logic, couldn't we GPS tag police cars?
"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 he was being followed by an unmarked police car, without a court order by state police."
The cake is a pie
Finally, a proper analogy.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
The cops need either a warrant or provable PC to search any non-visable section of your car, like your glove box or trunk. If they do not have these things, they could've found a severed head in your trunk and it'd still get tossed out of evidence.
That depends on local law. Last time I looked Virginia and Texas were the only states that allowed use of deadly force to protect your property. The state where I live now requires that I be in fear for my life before being using deadly force legally. Some states require I be in fear for my life and had no option to escape. These things change. Consult a local legal practitioner.
Shooting up the bad guys is like plugging in your broadband Windows XP system with only the quickstart guide from your ISP. You can do it, but it can lead to problems down the line. Before you shoot someone, take the time to learn what gives you the legal right to fire.
Every once in a while, I wonder if W. is crazy enough to try something that far out.
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
People who are against this are terrorist loving liberals. The police need good tools to fight terrorism. The idiots on this liberal hotbed slashdot don't want the police to use tools to get their job done because they support terrorism and oppose America in every way.
...in your driveway and get arrested!
Heck in some states, not having your car registered and insured IN your driveway and it's illegal.
They have you regulated no matter what!
Your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
To which constitution are you referring? The one for my country says:
Article the eleventh [Amendment IX]
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Article the twelfth [Amendment X]
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Unless the State in which you live in says you have no right to privacy, then you pretty much have a right to privacy, according to the constitution.
Now, we also all know that the constitution means approximately squat today, so your point is still well-taken.
Here's the thing that I find funny. The American left has us believing you have a right to privacy when it comes to abortions but not when it comes to the government sneaking electronics into your car when you aren't looking. You have a right to privacy when it comes to embarrassing truth about your past, but not when it comes to having a gun for self-defense in your own home. Heck, to many liberals, somewhere in the Constitution can be found a right to privacy, but nowhere in the Constitution can they discover a "right to keep and bear arms [which] shall not be infringed."
That there is considerable debate on this story here at Slashdot, where the Democratic Party appears by comparison to be extremely conservative, is not surprising - do you have a right to privacy or not? Since the line is so poorly defined by American liberals, they fight amongst themselves ad nauseam when what, to them, appears to be a borderline case is presented. That this case comes from New York is hardly surprising, either. New York liberals may be more intelligent than their Californian counterparts, but they are just as hypocritical.
To me, this is a pretty clear violation of due process. The government does not give you the privilege of car ownership. (Although, in some places in America, the government prohibits ownership of certain cars by subterfuge - you can't have an unregistered car on your own property (there's that right to privacy, again), and you can't register a car that doesn't meet emissions requirements, which change each year to keep the road full of brand new cars).
Anyhow, the government properly regulates where you can operate your vehicle, but that does not mean that it owns your vehicle. It can tell you not to drive on its roads, but it can't go to your parked car and sneak tracking devices into it, for that's a violation of due process.
Hopefully, the victim of this appeals his case; or someone who eventually appeals a similar case in New York wins. Your car is your chattel, your "effect" under the 4th amendment. But look also to the 14th amendment, which says that no State may "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." There is a very strong argument in favor of putting a tracking device on your car without your knowledge constituting a deprivation of your liberty.
But this is what happens when you put anti-liberty morons on the bench. I'm only surprised that California hasn't beat New York to the punch.
But as soon as he pulled off the roadway onto private property, he would have some expectation of privacy. Cops doing visual surveilance could not have followed him through a private access gate. The GPS unit followed him everywhere, even where he had an expectation of privacy! Therefore it is most definately NOT the same, unless it immediately turns itself off as soon as the vehicle leaves the public roadway! I can't beleive any judge would be stupid enough to fall for such a flawed argument!
Line of sight does not necessarily mean optically visible. Some materials are opaque optically, and transparent to radio signals. Besides, how many people do a walk around of their car before driving away?
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
My purchases and movements are public - someone following me could have access to them. However, that would require someone actually following me and gaining that knowledge. While one does expect actions done in public to be public, no one knows (or used to know, anyway) everything one has done in public - thus the expectation of privacy when the laws were written is different because it assumed human limitations. The aggregation of one's movement and actions elevates the expectation of privacy - it would require someone devoting their life to knowing yours, and so is an unreasonable expectation by the individual.
When Lexus offered to sell bulk telephone and address information, there was a large hue and cry because data that was public was aggrgated into a form that allowed someone with little difficulty to contact almost anyone. Obviously, a lot of people believed that the database violated their expectations of privacy, even though the data was public. While someone could have acquired that data, the aggregation (and to be fair, mass availability of cosequent data) violated the expectations of privacy for most people.
Individual actions in public have no expectation of privacy. Aggregated individual actions (cumulative descriptions or analysis of the actions of individual, particularly at levels of detail requiring dedicated personnel), however, seem to have precisely that expectation. The (public general) knowledge of surveillance capacities also affects what individuals do in what arenas - people don't expect someone to follow them for days on end, so even though they would expect someone to have seen some of their actions, they would not reasonably expect someone to have known their actions for weeks on end. The example quoted in the article description might not fit that because of the brevity of period (someone might follow you if you expose themselves to you), and the details are problematic, but there is an "expectation of privacy" - at some level - that differs for comprehensive or aggregated data from its constituent data points.
So why can't I tag all the police cars in my city with gps. I know it would be a lot more expensive than a radar/laser detector but if I was going to be robbing a bank.......
If the police really don't need a warrant to attach a GPS device, then neither do I?
So I can attach one to, say, police cars, judge's cars, privately-owned politician's cars, etc?
I am not a sig.
.. where sicko poiverts can't get away with randomly exposing themselves to women in coffee shops? It's an attrocimacy!
The whole freakin' system is out of order.
The real question is: how many of these are going to wind up on the cars of cops' spouses and significant others instead of on the cars of criminals? Since it doesn't require a warrant, does that mean it is perfectly legal to put one on the car of my girlfriend or my local traffic enforcement officer? Man, is this practice rife with potential for abuse!
And apprehending a person who indecently expose himself in is a bad thing? Sounds like a pretty legitimate use to me!
This is great news, the flip side is that it must also be legal for us to plant GPS tracking units on all police cars. Imagine the speeding we can now get away with. I'm only being partially sarcastic here...
Wasn't there a case recently where a man was sent to jail for tracking his significant-other's whereabouts by using a GPS-enabled cell phone placed in the trunk of her car? So this is legal for the police but not for everyone?
Just because I'm out and about in public doesn't mean that I should EXPECT my every move to be tracked and recorded by the government.
Seems like the police had plenty to obtain a warrant on this guy to put a GPS tracker in his car, they just decided that they didn't need to bother. I mean, all they really have to do is go up to a judge and say "we think this guy is doing something bad" and they'll get their friggin' warrant.
The problem with this ruling (and others like it) is that it says: "well, if you have the technology, go ahead and record EVERYTHING that goes on in public, because you have no expectation of privacy when you're in public."
What would people's reaction be if they did put enough cops on the street to track EVERYONE, ALL of the time? You'd think you were living in a police state, and you'd be right!
That's the problem with allowing the government free reign to use technology track anyone, even while they are "in public".
Sure, the GPS devices cost a bit (maybe a few hundred?)... but that's TODAY, what about in the future? Will everyone roll over and say "you're in public, it's all fair game" when they're able to track your every move, coast to coast, whether you're on foot or in your car? What if a new technology came along that made this rediculously cheap, such that they just switched it on for EVERYONE, ALL the time?
Would the naysayers here accept that? Because according to the precedent set by this case, it'd be perfectly OK if they did do that.
Right now the costs of putting cops on the street, installing networked cameras, GPS trackers, etc. is a BALANCE. It forces the government to think about how to employ the funds that are available. Add a few cops to a high crime district, install some red light cameras, add GPS trackers to the vehicles of a few suspects, etc.
In the not so distant future, the technology that will allow the government to track everyone, all the time may be cheap enough to employ. In some cities around the world these systems are already being built.
In this not so distant future, the BALANCE the we currently enjoy will be GONE. And we will all be living in a police state.
I'm not sure about state laws, but I acted as a legal officer (as a side duty, rather than my main job) in the Navy for a few years.
In federal jurisdiction, searches are legal if you have probable cause. Not applicable here.
Now, if you keep a desk in space on a ship where you work, the legal folks on the ship (Master at Arms) are allowed to search that if they want, probable cause or not, because you have no reasonable expectation of privacy in a desk in a public space. This is not *private* property though. Although not much is, on a ship.
Whether to classify a GPS tracker as a search or as a wiretap is a tough one. Under a search mentaility, anything that doesn't have a "reasonable expectation of privacy" is pretty much up for grabs. I.e. email has no expectation of privacy, but telephone calls do. I always thought it was an odd distinction, even more so now in the days of VoIP. Anyway, the cops can read your email without ANY warrant.
They also don't need a warrant to tail you, or stake out your house (am I right on this last one? I'm pretty sure no permission is required simply to "watch" from the street.)
So you can look at this from a perspective of utility ("How is this being used? Oh, instead of tailing? Well, obviously you don't need a warrant!") or from a perspective of a technical act ("What did you do? Oh, you put a FRIGGIN BUG in a guy's car? Hell yeah you need a warrant!").
The physical act is exactly like bugging, and the utility is like tailing. It's true that your vehicle's location is publicly known (hell, this wouldn't be an issue if the headline was "Police Track Man's Car Using Sattelite Optical Recognition", though that would be cool, too). But it's also true they shouldn't be "planting" devices on personal property without a warrant.
All that is to say, well, I don't know. I can see both sides. I think maybe this is OK, but if it were anything OTHER than a simple GPS tracker, like a GPS tracker with a microphone, it wouldn't.
Trucking companies and businesses use GPS to keep track of their vehicles and/or cargo, not their drivers.
So no reasonable expecation of privacy while on travelling on public roads or public areas. What could happen when GPS tracking devices get small/cheap enough to be planted on humans?
Would it be okay to say implant a device on all released convicted rapists to make sure they aren't allowed in certain areas?
How about putting them on shop lifters to make sure they don't show up at a store they stole from in accordance to an agreement they had for release?
How about being tracked for suspected "terrorism"?
How about employers putting them on their employees to make sure that they aren't taking too long lunches or too many smoke breaks?
A splippery slope I'm sure, but the line is being blurred. The only thing stopping the police from putting GPS devices on anyone/anything they "suspect" is the expense of the devices and the man power needed to process the data. The devices will get cheaper/smaller and the processing power/software needed is getting better every day.
I wonder how the police would feel if, while on duty, each one of them needed to wear a GPS tracking device as well as having their cars with GPS built in to make sure they were doing their jobs. After all, they are using government property, and they are being paid with government money, and patroling on government owned roads. No expectations of privacy should be the norm.... right?
Ceres
There have been a number of people out there who have been busted for stalking by placing gps on their ex's car... does this open a new venue for stalking??? Should their convictions be overturned?
, 00 .html
http://www.wired.com/news/wireless/0,1382,57576
Sure you can't expect total privacy in public, but it's not out of line to expect not to be stalked. In fact, something that makes public spaces bearable is to know that you can avoid people if you choose.
I think that that would probably warrant a YRO.
The ability to monitor random individual movements sans warrant changes the expectation of privacy one has in public substantially. While everyone could do this, the cost (and the number of people required) limits it to almost no one, and so people expect that their schedules, etc. are private. When the police can monitor anyone without warrant, the expectations of what one can do in public change considerably. The legal approval allows its use in many more circumstances than previously expected. If its use becomes widespread, the "expectations of privacy" change, and thus the actions one can take in public and thus the rights one has also change. Hence, YR (everywhere).
So now is it ok for me to place these GPS bugs on police vehicles so I know where they are?
Didn't think so.
In this case, the police planted a tracking device on the suspect's private property. You can argue all you want about the legality of tampering with his property, but that doesn't answer the more fundamental question:
If the information were readily available, even without planting a special tracking device, who should be allowed to use it?
What happens when we have good enough technology to track hundreds or thousands of cars using just satellite images? Without ever planting a tracking device, the police could download the satellite history from last month and see everywhere your car went.
And even if the police aren't allowed to do it, could a private company do the same thing? It's just visual data - data freely available to anyone with the capital to develop the technology. Should this information be "free", or are there some types of information that should always be guarded?
As technology improves, the veil of privacy will grow thinner and thinner. All sorts of information will be readily available, and could be used to track anything about anyone. Who should have access to this information?
Hello sir this is OnStar, and we have records of you speeding on 35 occasions this month. Your $5000 fine is in the mail.
This ruling essentially means that I (as a private individual) can plant a GPS device on anyone's car for any reason that's not illegal in some other way (e.g. for the purpose of stalking) since I could just as easily follow them or rent an airplane to track them or hire a private investigator...
I've made up my mind and now I've got to lie in it.
So does this mean it is legal for us to track official(police, ambulance, s.w.a.t., etc.) vehicles with the same method?
We pay for the roads that WE permit them to drive on. Shouldn't we be able to see how our tax dollars are spent on the road?
I could even imagine in car GPS trackers to alert you when an official comes within a given radius of you.
I'm a virgo and on Slashdot. Coincidence? Yes.
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.
The parent claims to be against a police state, yet sees nothing wrong with police state tactics. This I believe reflects the views of many Americans.
The drafters of the U.S. constitution came from a European tradition in which government, military, and police were a seamlss union, where the aristocracy routinly used the powers of the police and military to retain their control of government. A fundamental property of the proposed government was that its officials stand for review through frequent public elections. Taken as a whole, the people were less likely to be corrupted by political power than an individual, family, or small groups of cooperating families. Left to its own, any government will end up using the defensive powers of its police and military to oppress the general population. The three branches of the federal government, the clear deliniation of and limitations to the powers they wield, and the limits on the federal government's ability to intrude on the rights of the states, all were designed to shakle the government's power, to keep the beast at bay.
Government hates its chains. The return to old world totalitarianism will not happen when the beast gives one mighty heave and brakes its bonds. It will happen slowly, by erosion of wind and water. Unless we maintain our vigilence, one day the beast will be free and the President will become the Emporer/Sultan/Fuerer. In the name of God.
People do have an expectation of privacy on the road. That is why the line "I think someone is following us" has any signifigance. That is why people get restraining orders. That is why women charge men with stalking. Why drivers hate automated stop sign monitors and speed traps. Even though the level of privacy is not as high as when taking a dump, or having sex, or picking that scab off the top of your head, even so it is there.
Now, in this case, did the police have probable cause? Based on the story it sounds as though they may have. Who is the best judge of that? The men and women who are sworn to be neutral and have years of experience in this area, the people the constitution entrusted with such awesome power -- the courts. Spend a few minutes filling out an application, get on the calendar, make your case. If the judge agrees, go nail the perp's ass.
Gary Dunn
Open Slate Project
legally speaking, you're an idiot. I'm not allowed to "touch any property of someone without permission, even if it's in the public area"? Let me count the ways that is wrong - if I touch your backpack on the crowded elevator, if I tow your illegally parked car, if I pick up your abandoned property, and the list goes on.
You brainiacs act like you have some magic force field around you and "the man" cannot touch you in it even if you are walking naked with a gun in a day care center.
You have the right to protection from "unreasonable search and seizure in your person, house, papers, and effects". Your car might be an 'effect' but it certainly does not nor did it ever have the common law protection given to your person or house. Except you smelly hippies who live in a van down by the river - you might have a case.
If you are driving in your car, which you must be licensed to drive and have registered, you don't have the same rights and protections that you would have in your house. So taco-snotting in your living room - ok. In your car - not ok.
You don't jam from your person - then you've effectively set up a tracking device. You jam the entire area of interest from a neutral location, or better yet, many semi-random locations - for example, by hiding jammers in other people's cars local to the area.
..don't panic
It's already here, people.
Wake up and smell the truth.
It smells bad, doesn't it ?
Obviously you haven't considered the best method to keep from being trackedd which is described here.
since the location of a cop car is also very obvious and visible in public.
Except LEOs may also operate from undercover vehicles and the frequently do so precisely to catch people when they think the Law isn't watching.
jason
Or is the fact that some asshole who flashed a woman in a coffee shop got nabbed because of the GPS in his snowplow *not* a good argument against allowing GPS tracking evidence to be used by police?
I will open a "Scanning Salon", where you can drive through, and see if you have any hijackers.
Is this something new to readers here? Police don't need a warrant to make a search of a vehicle, they need probable cause. They had probable cause. The article has a huge bias. This doesn't mean a thing for average Joe, it only makes a difference for people who may seem to commit crimes. It is possible that further rulings would allow them to do more than that, but not this ruling! The article, and most other slashdotters, have taken this WAY out of proportion.
Plant a GPS tracking device on a Police car parked in a public street, and see how friendly the judges are then. Better yet, put it on the judges car, just so you know when he's cruising the local pick-up spot.
Signs to this web site started poping up in my city.
http://www.gpsokc.com/
There are 10 type of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
Investigator: So and so was killed in his apartment at the corner of first and fifth tonight at approximately 10pm. What cars were in the area?
Desk cop: Let me check... *click*,*click*... here's a list of every car in the area at the time of the murder. Here's another list of every car no longer in the area 10 minutes later.
Investigator: Only one car, eh? Looks like we have a winner!
I'd say if the real killer was on foot and you were at the stoplight when it happened, you're probably screwed.
In the big scheme of things though, is this really a big deal? I mean, you only need to be arrested for a felony in California to have your DNA added to the national criminal DNA database. After the rigged voting machines gave us that, everything else just seems to pale in comparison.
This sounds extremely creepy to me. Who would want to get stalked by crooked cops using GPS? Hell yes, they need a warrant for that. As long as we are living in a country that upholds its constitution and our senate and congress people don't take bribes.
It's perfectly legal for police to follow citizens as they drive or walk in public. One reason the government doesn't have every citizen followed constantly in public is that it would be cost prohibitive. (That's not the only reason, just one.)
However, with GPS technology, the government COULD track every person and every car in public. In fact Oregon and California are considering putting GPS units in all automobiles for tax purposes.
Pre-GPS, the cost of turning the nation into a police state was quite high. Now, it's relatively cheap. Accordingly, at one time that high cost acted as a check to keep our government from turning into a police state, but that high cost no longer exists. Thus, the ONLY thing keeping our nation from turning into a police state are laws to the contrary. If we don't enact those laws, our nation WILL become a police state as there is no other impediment to keep it from happening.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Don't let your dick run your life.
Does this ruling mean I can plant a GPS on, and track, every cop car in NY? If they have 'no reason able expectaion of privacy on public roads', they should have no problem with this.
New and exciting way to detect speed traps!
Has anyone put a GPS box on the judge's car yet? Why not?!? There should be a website by now that keeps track of exactly where his car is at all times.
if you're driving on a road you are not in private and nor can you reasonably expect much privacy. :)
;)
You're being seen by all the other drivers around/passing you, by traffic cameras, by speed cameras, by cctv cameras on surrounding buildings, by aircraft, people on bridges, satellites...
We have too much cctv in the uk unfortunately, but covering the roads really well makes a lot of sense - if nothing else it means the police can be watching the streets at night for accidents or people in danger.
If you want privacy, go somewhere private
As a brief addendum, I find it very strange to be agreeing with law enforcement over a privacy issue for once
Chris "Ng" Jones
cmsj@tenshu.net
www.tenshu.net
Read The Amendment Yourself, Sir. It doesn't say the government can poke at anything without a issued warrant; rather, it lists what they cannot poke at without a warrant, and what terms such a warrant may be properly issued under.
Additionally, even if you don't agree that finding the location of my car constitues a search among my effects, while you're in the neighborhood of the fourth, you might review the ninth amendment as well:
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
...only criminals will expose themselves to women!
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
Fine, if they aren't asserting any other priviledge here. Because if that is all it means, then I can track cars using the same means just as legally, including police cars.
That's my only point.
I forget what 8 was for.
So does this mean if I attach GPS devices to all the squad cars at my local police station and have a website which shows their location at all times I won't be prosecuted? I mean, surely the police have '... no expectation of privacy in the whereabouts of his vehicle on a public roadway,' either.
Sometimes, a prison is built slowly.
...
If we have no expectation of:
-privacy in moving about the country
-privacy in phone calls
-privacy in email
-privacy in chat
-privacy in surfing the Internet(s)
-privacy of assemblage and conversation in public places
-the right to speak freely anywhere but in our own homes (provided no one outside minds) because all reasonable places to assemble are private property
-the right not to be searched without charge or warrant, either at home, school, or work
-the right not to provide bodily fluids on demand of anyone on pain of loss of employment or education
-the expectation that we will not be watched and/or recorded at any time if we are not sealed in our homes
-the right not to be stripped and humiliated at will in order to travel by air
-the right to buy without surrendering privacy
in what way exactly are we not in a giant open-air prison?
Are you all feeling safer now?
I don't get why guys flash women. I mean, from my experience, women like looking at naked women. The best thing a woman can do when flashed at, is to point at it and laugh.
I suppose it would be okay for the cops to sneak up on you and put a GPS up your ass because you have "no expectation of privacy on the street".
RTFA! The cops put a GPS tracking device on a PRIVATE vehicle WITHOUT A WARRANT!
What part of this don't you fascist cretins comprehend?
If they could just as easily have kept the lawyer (and this WAS a LAWYER they were following because they were after his CLIENTS!) under personal surveillance, then why didn't they do that? To save a few bucks? Or because they COULDN'T - so they used this trick to do it?
The same crap legal judgements have been made about cops using heat analyzers to surveil the inside of your house because "the heat goes outdoors".
You
Do me a favor, kiss George Bush's ass for me next time you're down around his anus...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I can't remember a better insane example of how much these words, once a source of pride to the citizens of this country, are mere notions with no basis in reality any more.
U.S. District Judge David Hurd wrote that "Moran had no expectation of privacy in the whereabouts of his vehicle on a public roadway." Sorry, judge, but yes, he did.
When I drive somewhere in my car, I think it's perfectly reasonable to expect that I am not being followed and tracked by law enforcement when they have no probable cause to do so.
Don't you expect that privacy? Think about it: Even though you have committed no crime and the police have no compelling reason to think you have done so, wouldn't it surprise you if you found a map on the wall of the local police station with times and locations of everywhere you've driven for the past few weeks? I sure as hell would surprise me and make me more than a little mad if I found out they've been tracking me!
With this judge's idiotic decision, he has sanctioned police to be able to legally collect detailed tracking information for any person at any time for any reason--or even no reason at all! Given the state of today's technology, the judge has, through this decision, decided that it would even be legal for police to simply put GPS bugs with serial numbers on EVERYONE'S car so that they could simply trace every single person in anticipation of them possibly commiting a crime!
Hopefully the people of New York will realize that this is gross infringement on their freedoms and react accordingly.
In the article, it says of a different case, "In placing the electronic devices on the undercarriage of the Toyota 4Runner, the officers did not pry into a hidden or enclosed area." Excuse me, but the undercarriage of a car is not hidden? Does this mean that every time I get in my car to go somewhere, I should check the undercarriage of my car for bugs? What would the police do if I found one of their bugs, removed it, and smashed it to pieces? Probably arrest me for destruction of public property and obstruction of so-called "justice."
This is a clear case of judges tossing out the spirit and meaning of the law and simply coming up with wild interpretations suitable to their whims. I expect this kind of thing from lawyers, but from judges, it's simply intolerable, and represents a gross corruption of our legal system away from the people and towards an oppressive government.
I swear that I will never again pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, nor will I allow my kids to. At one time it was an important symbol of ideals I treasured, but it is painfully obvious that it no longer stands for a republic that believes in freedom and liberty for all. I am ashamed of this kind of behavior. Hopefully someday, things will change and I may believe in it once again.
If you need to spray paint a police building to track its movement, maybe you should lay off the drugs...
Consider your vehicle to be an extension of your home. Thus private property.
If I found something attached to my car, I'd call the bomb squad. It doesn't matter if it says GPS or Property of U.S Gov't in large friendly letters. It doesn't belong there, I have no idea what it really is, or who put it there, or if it will blow up, or spread anthrax, or radioactive materials. With the constant bombardment of rainbow colored terrorist alerts by the gov't & media, it seems to meet the prudent and reasonable man standard quite well.
Besides, being able to fsck with their minds is appealing.
Interesting question here: if you encrypt your e-mail, even very weakly (ceasar cipher perhaps) - can they still read it legally? Would it be a DMCA violation? Would that then make it non admissible?
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
Ahem
From this point forward the government has decreed that:
Seriously though, I do expect privacy on the road. I expect privacy in a public hospital, national forest, or in a courthouse, or in any number of "public" spaces. I dont see where this is different then setting a cop on the street corner to affix your personal prison type anklet locator on you to know where you go during the day, after all, you are out in public, where anyone can see you, why not allow them to track you? Just someone can be seen in a public space doesn't mean they need to give up their privacy. Someone futher up made a comment about a car being an "effect" as far as the Constitution was concerned. Considering America's car culture I would argue that it is as much of an extension of a person as the clothing on their back.
Sera
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
Some of you have some of the greatest minds when it comes to computers but are complete idiots when it comes to common sense, politics, how governments whittle the rights away from the common fool, etc...
I am really worried about this group. I guess cause I forgot what it was like to be young and dumb....
*sigh*
--- Every day I am forced to add another to the list of people who can kiss my ass...
You'll get busted for being under the influence of LSD? :)
Take the tinfoil hats off and take a few deep breaths.
The fact of the matter is that this is probably legal. The Constitution doesn't provide a "right to privacy" or a "right to not be followed". All the Constitution provides is protection from unreasonable search and seizure. If the cops follow you, they aren't searching you, therefore they don't need a warrant. If they use a GPS to follow you, they still don't need a warrant. As for placing the tracking device, as far as I know there is no law against sticking something to someone else's car without their knowledge, as long as you don't do any damage.
Now, there are good arguments for making this sort of tracking illegal, but at the moment it is not. The courts don't (or at least shouldn't) get to make up their own laws based on how they think things should be. They're only there to interpret the law as it stands. If the law says it's illegal, then they should throw out evidence obtained that way. If the law doesn't say it's illegal, then that evidence should be allowed. If you don't think that's the way the law should be, lobby Congress to get it changed (or lobby your state legislature, as that's probably an easier place to start).
"If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else."
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated ...
The 4th amendment protects you from intrusion by the government without just cause or a warrant. I remember in some states where police whould pull people over and start searching their cars. Courts moved to say that a car is a person's effects and therefore protected. So now they just couldn't go through your car just because they wanted. If a car is protected how can attaching a device and using GPS not be an invasion. It almost seems like he is saying if you use some kind of freeware tool then you can do anything with it. It is the act that is in question, not the tool.
The error of some people's argument in that GPS is everywhere or free, and driving on a public road means no privacy. If that is so they can just be old fashioned and follow you in your car without attaching anything to the car. The judge is sort of mistaken in saying they could have followed him therefore the GPS is the same thing. He is ignoring that the police trespassed on his property to put the device on his car. Law enforcement can not break the law to enforce the law. If something is illegal, just because technology makes it easier to do does not make it no longer illegal; illegality is not based on the ease of commiting the act. It is the job of the police to do the due dilligence, or whatever, to catch the criminal. Not make up a cheap PRECRIME division and catch you once you have done something.
Someone mentioned that GPS trackers usually need to be attached to the car power therefore they actually had to open or enter his car to attach it. That argument is not necessary since the fact that they altered his car without his consent for the purpose of tracking him without his consent.
There was some dumbass who said that the license was state property therefore they had the right to place anything the want behind that. It is either right or wrong for them to trespass on his property, only an idiot waste the time trying to divide the car up into discreet pieces where the law changes.
Using the judge's logic it is OK to commit a crime, or in his opinion for the cops to commit any crime for their purpose of building a case if they can commit it in a way that is less or not noticable at all.
As long as there are multiple ways to get some form of information they could get it anyway they want and then say we would have gotten the info some other way but we took a short cut.
Euphemism, what is that a euphemism for something.
did the police just slap down a gps unit onto his car? this is called illegal bugging i would presume? now to read TFA
Check journal for info on Anti-TextBook, an idea by me.
They police have the right to look in on suspicious activity but they do not have the right to harass you indefinitely. Police departments have been sued for harassment for pulling the same people over and over again for DWB.
If the guy new his car was BUGGED then he sure would not have been driving with drugs in his car. And bugging should require a warrant.
I think this all stems from the erosion of right following the Patriot Act. Law enforcement now have this large umbrella to act under, they have now begun to move into non-terrorist fields and abusing rights. Any attempt to abridge law enforcement is looked upon as aiding the evil-doers.
We are being asked to give up freedom for protection; you know the rest. Are we still able to question law enforcement about their activities.
Euphemism, what is that a euphemism for something.
...I think GPS scanners have more legitimate uses, like making sure that anyone bugging your privately owned car can't follow you wherever they hell they like.
I don't get it.
Police cars are public property, too. So I'd think you'd have an even BETTER case for being able to tag them at will than they do for private vehicles.
It seems that GM would have no ability now to ask for a warrant if an officer requests the location of a vehicle equipped with OnStar. Thus, the cost barrier to mass use of this new privilege spoken about in several above articles has already been breeched. Law enforcement doesn't have to pay for mass bugging. It has already been done.
Seems to me that armed with this information, anyone even mildly concerned about whether they're being tracked could search his car for a hidden GPS and either disable it, or remove it and use it in his/her own projects.
This does not surprise me.
But really, what happens when they start using this information to tail people with prior records?
Everyone forfits about half the bill of rights now whenever you get behind the wheel of car.
The - "its a privilage - not a right" - argument is always trotted out on stories like these.
Its always interesting to see how government reacts to things they call "privilages" - they immediately curtail rights in a very predictable kneejerk fashion.
This is why governments suck and (as our founding fathers knew) you need to keep an iron boot of restraint on the neck of government otherwise you end up being abused.
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
I'll tell you where I expect privacy, got it?
I have used GPS connected to one of my laptops on past trips. A neat benefit is that the map software highlights your trip path and the driving path concurrently on the screen. Another little gem is that it displays your land speed in realtime.
Just one of the MANY problems with covert GPS installations is the ability to _on a whim_ determine speed, where they were at and if the speed they were driving was appropriate.
Mind you, this means you could pinpoint someone that pisses you off and datamine over their road log from the past 6 months to look for instances of speeding.
And public roads? I have a Bronco2 and Jeep Wrangler that are offroad toys. If i go mudding or hunting(and not on government park property) it's no one's damn business when/where but my own.
A GPS is MUCH more serious than being tailed by a squad car or even being wiretapped. While both of the former involve just as much real people time to analyze, it would not be conceivable to monitor an entire city or municipality at once.
A GPS system, however, can scale to track many more 'suspects' without involving any more man power to manage. Instead, you could print out a pretty graph of driving patterns or a geographical plot diagram generated in the blink of an eye.
More information can be collected quickly and accurately with GPS and would become 'irrefutable' evidence in any case.
Besides, if someone puts ANYTHING on my car, they will be pulling that box out of their ass as I say 'track THIS'
Since GPS is a receive only technology, location is transmitted using FM (or stored and the device is retreived later but that doesn't work too well if you're the police wanting to track a vehicle). So can I use an RF detector on my car to find out if it is bugged?
For that matter, can I remove a tracking device from someone else's car? Brings a whole new meaning to wardriving.
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.
Wow, someone has all of this high technology used against him all because we think he was so shockingly ugly simply because we, collectively, thought he be punished for it?
Bravo. Clap. Clap.
Having someone "expose" themselves to you can certainly be creepy, but come on, law enforcement shouldn't be implementing biblical commandments.
This issue is very similar to the debate on Music piracy, but its ironic to me how when the "context" of the topic changes, the general consensual opion of the /. crowd changes as well. Let me explain.
Its always been possible to "track" someone who was traveling in public, be it walking or driving, simply by following and observing. The only change here, is that technology has advanced to where tracking someone has become much more efficient and effective through technology.
Likewise, the Music industry has always had piracy. However, when technology advanced, copying music became efficient and effective and was suddenly viewed as a threat.
So the real issue is the advancement of technology and its effect on society, not GPS tracking without a warrant.
How much longer before they extend this to putting a GPS device on your body and tracking everywhere you go without a warrent? What's the difference between this and that?
Pretty much nill...I'm not saying they shouldn't be allowed to use gps tracking at all, but they should have some sort of oversight, ie , a warrent
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.
Wow.. this has got to be a constitutional right we need to preserve! Exposition. Where do I sign?
The best class I ever took in college was a law class on search and seizure - the 4th amendment. Of course I was a CS major, NAL. Still, let me try to explain why this was ok, and respond to each of the 4+ posts up till now. I'll probably be flamed/trolled for this, but that's life.
The basic idea is that when you are out on the road, you shouldn't expect not to be seen. You might pull up to a traffic light next to someone you know, you might be photographed by a traffic camera or satellite, or indeed a network of police officers might be able to spot you.
If you are in your home, in the living room, with the windows blinds open, you shouldn't expect privacy, either. If the cops see you from outside your house smoking pot, they can come in and arrest you. However, if you close the blinds, shut the doors, and generally try not to be seen, you can expect privacy. The key clause is whether you have a "reasonable expectation of privacy." It pretty much means you have to make at least some small effort not to be seen. If the cops come on your property and peek through a tiny slit in the blinds and see you smoking pot, the arrest will be thrown out because they have violated your right to privacy.
So the guy on the road could have been spotted by anyone, at any time, and his location would be given away. Now, to clarify on previous points:
By covertly installing the GPS device they are making modifications to the vehicle without the owner's permission.
Hey - if the Judge truly believes in his ruling, then go ahead and attach one of these things to HIS car. Tie it to a web site, and post in realtime where his Honor's car is and has been at all times.
...think about it.
Although, I do have to wonder what would happen if one of those systems that says people were going 30,000 MPH because of a "glitch" also happened to state that His Honor was at Ye Olde Country Whorehouse and Buffet last evening...
I say - tag the Mayor's car... Chief of Police... All the judges... Cops... Even their personal cars... Watch the fun...
Being able to drive is a right not a privilege. We grant to the state the ability to regulate who shall be permitted to exercise that right, solely because the benefits that we receive from that concession are worth it - for example, we will know that our lives are in the hands of drivers who are more competent and less criminal than would otherwise be the case.
stupid.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
For 64 bucks you can buy a kit for an RF field detector good up to 3gHz and sniff your car once every morning...more often if you have something to hide.
Or am I wrong in assuming that the transmitter would be on all the time or at least periodically and emit a detectable field when powered up?
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
If they stuck it on the outside of the car, I don't have a real issue with it. If they broke into the car to put it in (unlikly - it needs to be outside anyway) that would be another issue. They just made SURE they wouldn't lose him.
You're still faced with the fact that the behavior you're trying to defend is illegal in many areas. Even where it's technically legal, it's still immoral, at least if any of the major Western and Eastern religions have anything to say.
The community, including the police, can and does have a responsibility to come down on such undesireable behavior. Many community members are very tolerant and can discern between individuals and the personal problems of that individual, but let's not abuse that by trying to intrepret kindness to another human as endorsement of unacceptable behavior.
Is it OK for anyone in law enforcement to plant any kind of a device on any car?
Is it OK for anyone NOT in law enforcement to plant any kind of a device on any car?
Is this a case of law over justice? Where have I heard that before?
Bruce Schneier has written about this sort of thing several times. He expresses concern that technology is shifting the balance of power between police powers and citizen rights in favor of the police.
In some cases, the solution is to legislate limits (such as requiring warrants for wiretaps). In others, the solution is to lower penalties for crimes, since the penalty was high when prevention (detection) was hard. Now that technology makes a crime easy to detect (such as aerial surveillance to detect building code violations), high penalties are unnecessary.
"What if I spray-paint the side of a police building, so I can track its movement more easily?"
This is perhaps the worst analogy that's ever been written.
Why do you say that? Sure it's extreme, but it's the same idea - marking something to track it more easily.
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Many new vehicles already have black boxes that record passenger conversations. They already have GPS devices and transmitters that interrogate roadside receivers to determine make and model of your vehicle. And most of the buying public doesn't know about it. I forgot which of the automakers installed such devices in ALL of their new vehicles in 2004.
The government has the ability to record your phone conversations, read your email (FBI-Carnivore), track your tv watching habits, and record your purchases at the grocery store (wonder what those 'discount' cards are for?).
Just think about it. The police don't need a warrant to put a GPS device in your vehicle just like the PATRIOT Act permits agents to search homes and CONFISCATE property under a low evidentiary standard, WITHOUT first notifying the owner. People are getting arrested and are called 'terrorists' for petty crimes. A group of Christians were arrested for evangelizing at homosexual rally. http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTI CLE_ID=42337/. Whether you agree with it or not, this appears to be a clear case of violation of free speech and religious rights just because states like California and cities like Philadelphia have 'hate speech' laws.
Are you getting the picture now?
while the gps system may be a precise locator, the majority of slashdot readers are already carrying locating devices, namely their mobile phones. its a little less fine grained but surely its pretty obvious that we are all being watched as a matter of routine. Phone records can be used to show where you were at a particular time. RF tagging also allows your location to be logged and cctv camera's routinely record you.
Is there a right to walk/ drive the streets without being casually identified. can/should your phone be used to identify that you attended an antiwar demonstration along with several 1000 other people.
should your presence there be used to blacklist you?
Will you be black listed , noted as deviant because of your political and social beliefs? now probably not, in the future, who knows.
privacy is not something that can be taken for granted.
we used to live in a world where not much was recorded about individuals, now it is trivial to keep track of anyone and everyone this is a reality of living in the 21st century.
A lot of people reading this will just think this is paranoid and funny
but Cell phones do log on to the network locating you to within a particular cell and in a city this can be a very small area.
RF tagging is implimented and there was a store embedding RF tags within store cards.
And in the uk at least CCTV is used on the streets of most if not all citys and within many factorys, shops and banks and hotels.
can it be used against an individual is without doubt. Will it be used against you as an individual perhaps, but privacy is a thing of the past unless you activally seek it.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
Conservatives are the ones that stereotypically pander to law & order issues. Which Supreme Court justices have consistently voted to rubber-stamp police tactics? Which party wrote the PATRIOT act?
What's next, you're going to blame the Asian tsunami on liberals, too?
gps is relatively inexpensive when you consider the fact that Many new cars already have gps installed! give it a 5-10 years and they all will from the factory. or they could work it so you pay for it as a required safety feature to fight terrorism. the real problem is a computer system large enough to not only hold this huge ammount of data but to process it at a quick rate. but with the budget increase of the CIA FBI NSA etc and the combination of thier resources it is now possible.
BTW all cellphones made within the last few years have built in gps tracking.
But if we had 100,000,000 cops on duty, they could follow you and trade notes, and no warrant would be required.
Example one: we don't have 1/3 of the population of the U.S. serving on the police force, all on duty at the same time. Did you sit around your house for a while, trying to come up with the dumbest, least relevant comparison you could come up with?
Whereabouts of vehicles, wherein the vehicles are registered to the government, the privilege of driving said vehicles is granted by government
A regulated activity is not a privilege.
and in a country in which the vehicles are driven on roads built by the government and maintained by the government.
Which means, what? They are free to shoot hippies crossing the highway? A highway that we paid for?
I'd encourage him to Read The Fucking Fourth Amendment
Why don't you read "The Fucking Fourth Amendment". How can you be secure in your person and effects if they can track you any time of the night or day? Then read the fucking 9th amendment, which spells out that just because a right isn't explicitly stated in the Constitution, doesn't mean we don't have it.
Privacy is dead. Get over it. But if you don't like it, don't look to the constitution for a right to it, because it ain't there.
SCOTUS were dumbasses on this one. The 4th amendment is ALL about privacy from unwarranted government intrusion, it just doesn't use the word "privacy" in the wording.
There have been a couple of recent incidents where people have been arrested for doing exactly what the police have done here. A man installed a GPS tracker on his ex's car, and was latter arrested and charged with a variety of different violations, including stalking. Those who argue that it is the same thing that has always been going on, just now with a technology boost, are dead wrong. They have always tapped phones, so what if now they tap teveryones phone from a secure location on foreign soil. It all happens incrementaly, and a fearfull society is more apt to allow it to happen, if not encourage it.
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,' But what if he frequently drives on private property? Wouldn't the GPS device still broadcast his loaction?
So let me make sure I understand, police can not tap your phone line without a warrant. Police can not search your private property without reasonable suspicion cause or your permission, whichever comes first. But they can install a tracking device on your car without your knowledge. Hmmm, I realize that this would do two things one it would avoid the need for 24 hour surveylance if they wanted to track your movements, and it would lessen tax dollars needed to support such. If the role was reversed and say I wanted to know where my elected local officials were going, and installed one on their cars would I be in violation of the law? Since it was deemed legal I suggest we all do that tonight.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!