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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."
If they attach it to my car without my permission, doesn't it become MINE to do whatever I want with? Seriously, how many of these do they really expect to recover and download data from? Plus, doesn't it become "theft of services" the minute they hook it up to my car's electrical system?
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
Let's try a better analogy:
Do the police need a warrant to overhear my conversations while I'm on my cell phone in a public place? No, but they are legally required to have one if they're going to bug my phone.
A GPS tracker will track exactly where the car is no matter what.
Given the limitations of GPS, except for when it's in a garage or building ;)
Seriously, though, if the police put a tracker on my car, and are unable to produce documentation demonstrating that they have done so, is the tracker mine if I discover it before they remove it?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
An easy way to answer your question, and countless others like it:
"What would happen to me, as a private citizen, if I did this to a cop?"
If the answer is "Nothing," then it's probably a reasonable thing for the cops to do to you. If the answer is "Waal, I believe that there'd be a tasin', boy," then it is not.
So, you tell me. What do you think would happen if you were caught placing tracking devices on police cars?
And as for the courts permitting this kind of crap to occur: remember the most important lesson of the Gulag Archipelago. The judicial system is your last defense. When they fail to protect your rights, the time for peaceful reckoning is past.
Do the police require a warrant if they want to follow me around for the day?
No.
If yes then I believe this should require a warrant.
But its no.
Else, what's the diff except it costs much less and is more discrete.
Good point. I wonder if the police would object if I went up to their patrol cars, ghost cars, and other vehicles and slapped my own gps transmitters on them, and then published their whearabouts in realtime on google maps. I mean, I could do all this legally if I just had a bunch of people follow their cars around all day and post their whearabouts, right?
So whats the diff except that it costs much less and is more discrete?
Yet, something tells me the police would object strenuously to this.
Alright, having just written a legal brief on the subject, I'll explain the legal rationale behind these rulings so that we can actually have an intelligent debate on this subject.
The Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures, only applies when a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy in the item or information searched or seized.
Here, the information about the person's location is what is being "seized." Thus, the way the debate is framed centers around the question: Does a person have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their location?
Now, the law is pretty clear in some respects. For example, you have a reasonable expectation of privacy in your home. Thus, the Fourth Amendment applies, and police need a warrant to track your movements in your home.
On the other hand, you have no expectation of privacy when you travel out in public. This is rather obvious because when you travel in public, everyone around you can see you and knows where you are. Thus, the Fourth Amendment does not apply, and it has been long established law that police can conduct surveillance on anyone in a public area without a warrant. (Note: This is the same basic rationale by which placing cameras on street corners does not violate the Fourth Amendment.)
The Supreme Court has further extended this rationale to apply to electronic tracking devices (e.g., GPS, Triangulation Beacons) used for tracking people in public. The rationale is that as long as the subject is in public, he has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his location.
Thus, the Fourth Amendment does not apply and you have no constitutional protection against police attaching a GPS device to your car. Police can track your car with a GPS locator, provided they break no laws with respect to installing the locator (A non-constitutional issue).
That said, the Supreme Court has left the door open to regulating this type of behavior by police. The majority opinion in U.S. v. Knotts left open the possibility of using "different constitutional principles" to regulate police use of tracking devices if "dragnet type law enforcement practices" developed. Dragnet in this context refers to systematic and coordinated measures for apprehending criminals or suspects.
Thus, presumably one could argue that if the police started using GPS devices in our cell phones to track everyone in a systematic manner, another constitutional principle, like for example the right of privacy, could be applied to find a constitutional ground to prevent it. Whether the Supreme Court chooses to use the dicta in Knotts is of course up to it.
Anyway, that's it, have fun debating.
The sun beams down on a brand new day, No more welfare tax to pay, Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light...
an example today: New Orleans cops who shot and killed civilians. Dismissed.
as to "If you do it"; a while ago in Portland OR the Mayor and chief of police (now the new mayor) said it was ok to look through the trash of a person of interest so... a local paper looked through the MAYOR's trash and published the results. Sure were a lot of wine bottles.....
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
Otherwise they'd ticket people who fail to yield, make illegal lane changes and tailgate...
Each of those is a ticketable offense, as is the catch-all "reckless driving". They're just quite a bit more difficult to spot.
The point is that the police departments make no effort to enforce them. They enforce two things: Speed and Intoxication.
It is hard to argue with drunk driving. Having a moving object that ways 3000+ lbs cruising with no brains in control is a good use of traffic enforcement.
But speed?
Everyone "Knows" that speed is dangerous. The problem is that the facts don't support what you think you "Know". Lets try hard statistics (that they don't tell you because they aren't sexy).
- 80% of fatal traffic accidents happen at 45mph or less. (We spend most of our time in SoCal a 5mph on the freeway)
- The California Highway Patrol used to have a list of the top 20 root causes of accidents.
#4 on the list with 16 percent was driving too slow!
#16 on the list with a fraction of one percent was driving to fast.
- In the mid 80s the NHTSA commissioned a report to show how many lives 55mph saved. The report was delayed 18 months because they didn't get the results they wanted. After massaging/spinning the statistics for a year and a half the best they could come up with is if they ignored the vast improvements in auto safety each life that they saved cost 150 man/years of extra time on the road. An analysis of the data showed that the safest speed to travel was 10 to 15 mph faster then the flow of traffic. (Car and Driver had a great analysis of it)
Now if you consider the vast improvements in auto and tire safety it becomes obvious that the actual risk from driving went UP because of the 55mph limit. The 1st obvious reason is because if you are crawling along at a speed that doesn't require that you pay attention people won't pay attention. (Refer back to the bit about moving objects with no brains controlling them...) A second reason is they had bred a generation of drivers that were unsafe a 55 because they had learned "aiming skills" instead of "driving skills".
Traffic enforcement is about revenue. Fear a government that has become so disconnected that it thinks you are its source of income instead of thinking that it is supposed to serve you.
Oh and back to the original point of this thread...
Ben Franklin would have a conniption. The United States was the land of freedom. If it wants to become that again then it needs to ALWAYS error on the side of freedom. You think these things make you safer? More secure? Security is a FEELING. They are protecting you from things that aren't a credible threat. The government can NEVER make you safe unless they lock you in a closet. You are mortal!!! Life has a 100% mortality rate. Being safe is never the point unless your eyes are closed. LIVING is the point. Go out and live and don't worry. You might experience some things that have a little risk involved with them. If you do you will probably smile because you are LIVING!
with what's happening in Arkansas. No, not the assassination of that congressman, but rather what's happened in the small town of West Helena, Arkansas.
They have a crime problem there and the government imposed a "curfew" that eventually ended up becoming what is practically all out martial law. It started out as a teen curfew and now people are reporting that they're being told to not come out of their houses by the police. They're not simply advising it, but ordering it by punishment of law. Enforcing it via men with guns. Now with the ability to know where you go and what you do there is absolutely nothing stopping a situation where an entire population is under constant monitor.
It's beginning. No, scratch that, it's began. I wouldn't be surprised if a full force take over of the government occurred before the next president is sworn in. Before the end of the year, even. Normally, I'd question myself for saying such outlandish things, what with my active, run-away imagination and all, but this time it's all adding up. I gotta get my family out of here.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.