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."

Comments

Okay, so this changes what again?

[Skyshadow]

Okay, at the risk of pissing off the tin foil hat crowd, I have to ask: what's the problem here?

As much as I'm against the Big Brother state, I gotta say it's a little absurd to expect privacy while you're on the road. I mean, the cops don't need a warrant to tail you. They don't need a warrant to put out an APB for your car. Those things accomplish the same thing as GPS -- either tracking your movements or locating you, and they're all completely legal and, in my opinion, reasonable.

This isn't a case of erosion of privacy. It isn't a freedom being taken away. It's not, in my decidedly non-lawyer opinion, a violation of anybody's Constitutional rights. It's just a new way of doing the same things that have been done for decades.

Re:Okay, so this changes what again?

[holysin]

After RTFA:

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.

Ok, this is the problem: they PLANTED a GPS chip in his vehicle.

Re:Okay, so this changes what again?

[realdpk]

I wonder if someone found the GPS unit, they'd be able to legally sell it on eBay? :)

Re:Okay, so this changes what again?

[trentblase]

This doesn't sound like it's too different than a wiretap or audio bug planted on something

I agree -- and therefore it's consistent that they should need a warrant.

Re:Okay, so this changes what again?

[SydShamino]

Posted again, since the question is asked again and again...

----- Disclaimer -----
With a court order to specifically track this guy, I have no problem with them using a GPS transponder attached to his vehicle. This is in reply to parent poster's quote "it's a little absurd to expect privacy while you're on the road." It sounds like the parent poster would be fine if the government put GPS trackers on every car, because they could tail every person with a cop already.
----- /Disclaimer -----

You don't get to be "private" in public, per se, but I do feel it is important that you be able to be "anonymous" in many cases.

"So, how can you be anonymous when you have a license plate?" you might ask.

Simple, there are 300 million people in the country and, at any given time, no one -cares- to read your plate and track where you are. If you commit a crime, or if someone with a similar car committed a crime, then sure, a police officer might see your car and check your plates. But, if they don't match, the officer will move on. The event is eventually forgotten and there is no "proof" that the event ever happened.

Automatic location tracking changes that. 25 years from now, someone can go back to a GPS database and see where you were last night. This where anonymity is lost.

Let's assume you buy pr0n from a shop. Your license plate is visible to all who care to look, but again, -no one cares-. Now add a GPS tracker, and, at a later date, the names of every person who ever visited the store can be retrieved. There goes your political career.

Let's assume you go to church. Again, outside of the church itself -no one cares-. But, add a tracker, and the government knows everyone who visted a certain mosque, ever. Or, they know everyone who attended mass last weekend.

In summary, yes, if there is reason to care, the government can already track you in public. But this takes the efforts of a human, which means it is rare, costly, and, most importantly, not permanent. Eliminate human involvement from the monitoring and it becomes routine, pervasive, and, worst of all, permanent.

--- Update ---
Since the last time I posted this in response to the same question, a judge has agreed with me!

On election day, some people were copying down the license plate numbers of people voting (in Ohio IIRC). A judge ordered them to stop. Although they were driving on public roads to polling places on public property open to the public, a judge recognized that they had the right not be tracked.

Re:Okay, so this changes what again?

[Stalus]

"Moran had no expectation of privacy in the whereabouts of his vehicle on a public roadway."

So was this GPS smart enough to turn off when he wasn't on a public roadway? Perhaps while his car was in his driveway? Some neighborhoods' streets are not public. Parking lots aren't public. Granted, an officer tailing him could likely establish the same information, but assuming that the car is always on public property is silly.

Re:Okay, so this changes what again?

[dougmc]

May question is why do the police have the right to tamper with someones car?

Let's flip it around a bit ...

It's certainly legal for an individual to follow a police car around, as long as they don't break any other laws. (Speeding, possibly stalking, though that would require other things as well.)

But would it be legal for Joe Citizen to put a tracking bug like this on a cop car?

It could certainly make for an interesting legal situation if a person were to go up to a cop, say `I'm going to put this tracking bug on your car', and then proceed to do so. The cop would probably say `you can't do that', then arrest him when he tries to do so anyways ...

This ruling really needs to be appealed, and soon.

Re:Okay, so this changes what again?

[Cecil]

I mean, the government put the pavement under his tires, too...

This is one of the things that really gets on my nerves. The government is not supposed to be like some company that demands reimbursement for providing a service to you. The government is you. They didn't pay for the roads. You paid for the roads, with your taxes. The government is simply your agent. You elect them, you fund them, they work for you. Somewhere along the line, this has been forgotten, and the government now acts just like a corporation, and exploits the public just like the corporations do. "What can I get away with today?" seems to be the mentality.

It's not the government's right to do anything unless it's doing it on behalf of the majority of the people. Only in a few very rare cases should it be allowed to do otherwise, and only when it needs to protect the public from themselves. It should only go so far.

Win a free GPS!

[Anonymous Coward]

Search your car to find out if you win.

Can of worms

[nysus]

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?

Re:Can of worms

[nuclear305]

"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?"

Cost. Technology is expensive. Storing data costs money. Paying staff to process said data is even more expensive. If you're going to start tracking "thousands of potential suspects" in the same neighborhood...GPS is not the way to go, cameras are.

Damn double standards!

[Wescotte]

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!

Would they really need GPS for that?

[Anonymous Coward]

"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.

Re:No more cheating!

[Skyshadow]

Newsflash: For the last, oh, six decades, a couple hundred bucks will buy you someone to follow your significant other around and tell you where they've been. They'll even take pictures for you. And they're even licensed by the state.

Quick! We need a YRO post on this invasion!

That name again

[martinX]

is Mr Plow.

GPS jammer

[chaffed]

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?

Isn't a Warrant Needed?

[canfirman]

I thought that a warrant was needed before any sort of surveylance was done. If I RTFA:

When Robert Moran drove back to his law offices in Rome, N.Y., after a plane trip to Arizona in July 2003, he had no idea that a silent stowaway was aboard his vehicle: a secret GPS bug implanted without a court order by state police. (my bold)

...and...

What's raising eyebrows, though, is the increasingly popular law enforcement practice of secretly tagging Americans' vehicles without adhering to the procedural safeguards and judicial oversight that protect the privacy of homes and telephone conversations from police abuses. (my bold)

The last line sums it up - it seems that police more and more are not adhering to the "rules" to prevent abuse, and now this judge has given his consent for the police to break those "rules". I have no problem using GPS as a surveylance technique, as it's like planting a bug or homing device, but as long as the judicial process has been followed. This ruling by the judge starts to erode at the "innocent until proven guilty" theory. It's the abuses under the Patriot Act all over again.

Re:Isn't a Warrant Needed?

[Brandybuck]

I thought that a warrant was needed before any sort of surveylance was done.

Not all all. Surveillance without a warrant is perfectly legal. What is prohibited is an entry or search of private property without a warrant. In this particular case a warrant should have been obtained, but only because the car was private, not because it was under surveillance.

He should sue for theft

[Lord Kano]

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

Strange Double Standard

[Boricle]

In the article, there are two situations (there are more, but for now, I'll mention two of them).

1 - Police Don't Need Warrant To Use This
2 - In Colorado, a man was convicted for tracking his (soon to be ex) wife using one of these.

Call me a bit strange, however, if an ordinary person can be charged (and convicted) for doing this, then really doesn't that suggest that there needs to be some form of judical oversight when the police do it?

Boris.

Disclaimer - I'm not even in the US.

Your car

[phorm]

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.

Re:Your car

[newdarktimes]

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?

It's even worse than that. "Bugging" a car in this way is not as straightforward as many people think. It's unlikely they even did it without opening the doors. I used to work for a company that did vehicle tracking, including covert law enforcement use such as the one described, and for "bait-cars" that were left out for people to steal.

It's not like they're just slapping a tiny magnetic device to the undercarriage of the vehicle.

The biggest problems are the GPS antenna and the power supply. A small battery won't last any longer powering the unit than your mobile phone would without being recharged, so for long term surveillance you need to tap into the vehicle's power supply. That means you need to mount it where you can splice into the vehicle's power lines--for example, we'd sometimes mount ours inside the frame of a door (if it has power windows or locks) or concealed under the dash if there was enough space (usually there isn't).

As for the GPS antenna, it requires line-of-sight to 3 or more overhead satellites, meaning you need to "see" a good chunk of the sky with it. You can mount it under plastic or glass, but if you tried to mount it under steel you'd lose reception. What's often done to conceal it is to mount the antenna under the car's plastic dash or within the bumper, if the bumper is made at least partially of plastic or rubber. You only need about a square inch or two of surface-area to mount a tiny patch antenna underneath.

There's also power circuitry (to clean up the vehicle's 12v line), logic circuitry, and a mobile phone or other transmitter included with the tracker. A common misconception is that only a GPS receiver is needed, but GPS receivers are just that--receivers. They receive signals from the GPS satellites, they don't transmit anything back to the satellites. You need to accommodate relaying the vehicle position to your monitoring station through other means such as an SMS-enabled radio (phone).

If you don't integrate all this onto a single PCB (we didn't), then this is a whole lot of electronics to mount in the vehicle. Even if it is on one PCB, you've got the circuit board, power cable running to the source, a transmitter antenna plus it's cable running to the mounting spot, and a GPS patch-antenna plus it's cable running to a limited-position mounting spot. It's not easy to conceal all this stuff, mount it where vibration and weather won't harm it, and accommodate the GPS antenna's restrictions. I'm sure that's why they did this when the guy was out of town--so they could rip his car apart for a couple hours while they installed it.

As you can imagine it's not just intrusive with regard to privacy. It's very physically intrusive as well.

"Freedom and liberty," blah blah blah...

[KingSkippus]

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.