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Warrantless GPS Tracking Is Legal, Says WI Court
PL/SQL Guy writes "A Wisconsin appeals court ruled Thursday that police can attach GPS trackers to cars to secretly track anybody's movements without obtaining search warrants. As the law currently stands, the court said police can mount GPS on cars to track people without violating their constitutional rights — even if the drivers aren't suspects. Officers do not need to get warrants beforehand because GPS tracking does not involve a search or a seizure, wrote Madison Judge Paul Lundsten."
How can warrantless GPS tracking be legal while warrantless car searching is illegal. I am sure that a higher court will reverse this ruling... but it is scary to speculate about what happens if it is not reversed.
... it was dark, this guy was attaching a device to the underside of my truck that looked like a bomb. So I shot him.
Have gnu, will travel.
This sounds like a crazy decision, but the WI judge isnt making any new law here (not that the law is correct.) In fact, police have always been able to do this, because citizens have "no reasonable expectation of privacy" when they are in public. 4th amendment law rarely protects anyone when they are outside in public, with the rare exceptions of when their bags or persons are protected from search and/or seizure (that is, if a search or seizure has occurred.) If you are interested more in this crackpot area of the law, see US v. Katz and its wide ranging progeny, especially US v. Knotts (electronic tracking devices, no reasonable expectation of privacy in your location).
As a lawyer in Wisconsin, I can tell you that this decision is pretty meaningless. I have had several cases go to the court of appeals (this court) and you almost always lose there on novel issues like this one. Til the WI supreme court rules takes this and rules or denies further appeal, this is not news. For some reason our CoA's don't like making big splashes, they will almost always just side with the state.
that privacy must be considered as well as just rights against search and seizure. My state has ruled exactly the opposite: that a warrant is necessary in order to track someone with GPS.
The WI decision contradicts decisions in a number of other states. I doubt it will stand.
Does this mean I can do it? Stalking jokes aside, what's the difference between me attaching a GPS to someone's car and me following them around? Surely it's legal for me to tail a car. This just makes it simpler for me to track the whereabouts of multiple cars at once.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
I know my car. And yes, I'm paranoid enough to search it from time to time.
Now let's assume I find that baby. I obviously don't know who it belongs to (I doubt the police would inform me). It's on my car, so my assumption would have to be that it's mine. I dismantle it, because I love poking at shiny tech stuff. Am I liable for the destruction?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What the defense lawyers should have argued is that by affixing the GPS device to the defendant's car without his knowledge or request, the GPS device was a gift to the defendant. When they did so, they gave up the right to claim the device as their own property, and in fact gave it to the defendant. There is precedent to back up this argument.
When the police took the tracker back, the defense should have claimed that was a seizure of the defendant's property, and should have required service of a warrant. Hey, it worked for music CDs. Might as well try it for GPS trackers.
Since the police are using his own property (the vehicle) for a public purpose (the tracking/investigation), they need at least probable cause and more likely a warrant to satisfy both procedural and substantive due process. If you read the article, you should take notice that this was essentially the argument that the ACLU spokesperson made without explicitly mentioning the 5th Amendment.
There's also an "unreasonable interference" due process argument.
Unfortunately, failing to raise the appropriate argument in the lower court may be construed as a waiver unless the defendant can demonstrate incompetent council.
'Poor (evil stalker) guy is probably screwed.
If asked by a police officer (in the US) to account for my movements, my right to decline to answer is protected by the 5th amendment.
Requiring me to carry a tracking device that would automatically answer this question is tatamount to forcing me to verbally answer, and thus seems to also be a violation of my 5th amendment rights.
How could this possibly be legitimized by tricking me into carrying a tracking device by slipping it into my pocket/bag/car?
This doesn't impact the police's ability/right to physically follow me; I just shouldn't have to help them.
A federal judge told the cops that they need a warrant to track your location via cell phone. I fail to see how this is any different than tracking your location by GPS. Unless the police have more power than the feds...?
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/celltracking/lenihanorder.pdf
:(){
What we ought to be asking for is for some clever engineering /. reader to develop and market a device that can find a GPS unit on your vehicle.
Already done, and cheaply. Just purchase an R.F. field strength meter, a common tool for those in amateur radio and radio communications in general. There are a wide variety of models and price-points.
They are relatively simple and cheap to build yourself, especially for frequencies under 500mHz. Here's a rather fancy LED-bar indicator design with plenty of sensitivity and good to ~2gHz that won't break the bank found in a Google search:
http://www.qsl.net/n9zia/wireless/pics/LED_sig_meter.png
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Police got a warrant to put a GPS on his car and secretly attached it while the vehicle was parked in Sveum's driveway. The device recorded his car's movements for five weeks before police retrieved it and downloaded the information. Wisconsin court upholds GPS tracking by police
The tracker is a receiver/recorder, unless the IF is leaking badly, the field strength meter is useless.
Most of the smaller/cheaper GPS receivers that I've seen aren't all that well shielded and would leak enough of the LO (local oscillator) from the receivers' mixer to be detectable within 2-3 feet by an amplified FSM, which is what I was thinking.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
The spirit of the idea seems to be tracking an individual without having to go through the trouble of a warrant. The spirit will undoubtedly be abused. If there are no loop holes to jump through to start tracking an individual they might as well track everyone. It's even easier if the vehicle already has a tracking system such as OnStar. From there they can do whatever they want such as track speeding and mail you tickets.
I can say [REDACTED] anytime I want!
It seems to me a GPS device would give inadmissible evidence if just attached to the car and left there. The police would still have to physically follow the car to provide eyewitness testimony (or better yet, video evidence) that the car travelled to all the places the GPS unit did.
If the police don't observe the car's journeys, then they have no way of proving that the GPS wasn't removed from the original target vehicle, moved independently of it by a third party, and then reattached later.
As far as I know, that's called 'reasonable doubt', and makes the evidence sufficiently suspect to tampering so as not to be reliable in a court of law. I think it would render the evidence gathered by the device to be considered 'hearsay'.