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Police Secretly Planting GPS Devices On Cars
bfwebster writes "The Washington Post has a long investigative article on how more and more police departments are secretly planting GPS tracking devices on the cars of people they are investigating — usually without a warrant. After-the-fact court challenges on this technique have largely upheld such use of a GPS device, though the Washington State Supreme Court has ruled that a warrant is required."
Do the police require a warrant if they want to follow me around for the day? If yes then I believe this should require a warrant. Else, what's the diff except it costs much less and is more discrete.
Grump
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
Toss it on the roof of a Penske truck or something! They'll be following it all over the country!
I fucking hate cops. They all believe that if you're in jail that you're guilty, they're only interested in processing cases not justice, and a good majority of cops are just psycho-bullies from grade school who want to shoot a gun.
Mod me down if you want, you'll think differently when you're at the shit end of their crooked stick.
Remember that 55% were dumb enough to reelect bush in 2004 too.
i bet most people wouldnt care if the gps gave them free directions. free gps for everyone!
Innocent until proven guilty.
The cops don't get to assume guilt and violate anyones 4th amendment rights based on a hunch. That's what warrants are for. They have to present probable cause, based upon sound information and reasoning, satisfactory to a court, prior to violating someone's rights.
Have gnu, will travel.
It is quite clear that this tracking indeed is search for which a warrant is required under the constitution. This is a type search which was not envisioned at the time the founders wrote the constitution and far more more dangerous and frightening than they likely imagined. They are spinning in their graves for certain. We are seeing grave risks to the very threat to our freedom by tyranny, worse than what the founders of the US had feared. The way everything people can do can be monitored tracked and then data mined would have shocked and deeply disturbed them if they were alive to see this. We should be very concerned about these dangerous trends.
The police and FBI have a long, sordid history of intimidation, harassment and disruption of dissident groups and activists (up to and including murder). Any state surveillance of people should require a warrant—both to provide some oversight (which isn't much, considering the way some courts like to rubber-stamp these requests) and make a record of the state's activities against its own citizens.
hehehe - here's a thought; I'm guessing I'm not the only circuit hacker here. I figure with $50 worth of parts from Mouser I can make one of these that will store to an SD card. If you have a cop that stops at the local coffee shop regularly, and drives the same car, stick on on his car and pick it up a couple days later. It's no different than trailing the officer around all day, after all.
Who's with me?
OK, now here's the real question; if we are afraid to track the government - even just the local public enforcement officials - at the same level as they are tracking us, do we not have a very serious problem?
"Does the government fear us? Or do we fear the government? When the people fear the government, tyranny has found victory. The federal government is our servant, not our master!" -Thomas Jefferson
Jefferson spent years contemplating these issues, and debating them with many of the period's other great minds. Have you spent enough time researching it to disagree? If not, you should not blindly accept his statement - but you should spend the time studying. This great experiment is worth it. See Common Sense and The Federalist Papers if you need a starting point.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
How do you post at +2 with trolls like that?
They may not dispense justice, but they can arrest and imprison you for days without filing charges. You get to be packed into a room full of real criminals for 72 hours while they figure out if you should even be charged or not.
But I guess since there are no crooked cops this is not a problem.
One phrase: Plausible Deniability
Police: "Did you put the GPS tracker we put on your car on the cross country bus?"
You: "GPS tracker? What's that? I saw something stuck to my car, but I thought it was someone's "hide a key," so I took it off and put it on the curb so the person who owns it could come find it." Like I said, I didn't know what it was and I didn't put it there, so I took it off. It wasn't mine. I don't know what happened to it.
In short, they may put it on my car, but I am under moral or legal obligation to practice "ordinary care." I can't take it and sell it as if it belongs to me, but I certainly don't have to protect it in any way.
There are a few interesting points in your post: It all hinges on the "reasonable expectation of privacy".
If I'm walking down a public road, and I look around and don't see anyone nearby, do I have a "reasonable expectation of privacy"?
Is there legal distinction between short term privacy and long term privacy? e.g. Is my expectation that people will not follow me around for any significant period of time "reasonable" under the US constitution?
If a police officer is patrolling in a marked police car, do they have a "reasonable expectation of privacy" or would it be ok to tag that police car with a GPS tracker and display the location real time in a Google Maps mashup? Is there some other law that would prevent this apart from the constitution?
If the above is ok, what about if the police office is parked behind some bushes/a billboard in a "Dukes of Hazard" style speed trap. Does that officer have a "reasonable expectation of privacy"?
What about if said officer is patrolling in an unmarked car (but one which was ID'd as a police car earlier), do they now have a "reasonable expectation of privacy"?
I'm guessing that most of these questions haven't been answered by US courts. I'd be particularly interested if there is a distinction between the expectation of privacy for police officers and the expectation of privacy for the general public.
For you, a private citizen, following a police officer or other official while in performance of their duties is illegal.
It begs to be asked: why?
"It's time to take life by the cans." ~ Bender ("Bendin' in the Wind", ep. 3-13)
ChrisMP1 is correct. Being seen in public is not the same as being tracked, electronically or otherwise.
From what I gather, your legal brief justifies stalking in public.