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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."
Laws and amendments need to keep up with game changing technological development.
That means I can attach GPS devices to police cars! Never again will I get a ticket while driving through the People's Republic of Wisconsin!
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
... 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.
If it's only vehicle location track, how is this different than having the police tail the vehicle or follow it via helicopter, etc. This seems like a lower-cost mechanism for doing the same thing. Is there more to it than that?
This is why we have the Bill of Rights. Because governments will trample on personal freedom at their whim unless controlled by the law or the people.
This ad space for rent.
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).
How can warrantless GPS tracking be legal while warrantless car searching is illegal.
Police don't need a warrant to follow a car, and in my opinion, GPS tracking is more akin to tailing a car than searching through it. I'm not thrilled by this ruling, but it doesn't seem blatantly unconstitutional.
On the one hand, you've got the theory that this is analogous to assigning an officer to watch and tail a suspect's car, which is perfectly legal without a warrant.
On the other hand, you have, for example, things like Kyllo v. United States, where using thermal imaging equipment was treated as a search even though ordinary visual observation from off the property is not.
I suspect a higher court would rule that GPS devices are more common in civilian use than thermal imaging, and that when driving your car in public you have no reasonable expectation that your movement will be unobserved, and so rule that this court got it right, there is no Fourth Amendment violation.
if Police can do it without it being a suspect OR having a warrant, then we, the citizens, should have that same right. That means that we can now track judges to find their homes, what schools their kids go to, where member of the opposing political parties are heading off to (what do you mean that is a no-tel hotel; and hookers were there, along with representatives from Exon??? Really). Want to know where the chief of police or head of your school lives? Real easy now that nobody has privacy.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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.
From August 14, 2008 - http://www.insidetech.com/news/articles/2833-police-planting-gps-trackers-on-cars-without-warrants
Privacy advocates are shocked. They say that by monitoring the movements of people, many of which are likely innocent, police departments across the country are committing a Big Brother-esque invasion of privacy. And one state Supreme Court is on their side. The Washington State Supreme Court ruled that a warrant must be obtained to justify such invasions of privacy.
However, other state supreme courts - including New York, Wisconsin and Maryland, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in Chicago - have declared that warrants are not needed.
First - way to go, State of Washington.
Next, it's not cut and dried, legally. From TFA:
Sveum, 41, argued the tracking violated his Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure. He argued the device followed him into areas out of public view, such as his garage.
The court disagreed. The tracking did not violate constitutional protections because the device only gave police information that could have been obtained through visual surveillance, Lundsten wrote.
Even though the device followed Sveum's car to private places, an officer tracking Sveum could have seen when his car entered or exited a garage, Lundsten reasoned. Attaching the device was not a violation, he wrote, because Sveum's driveway is a public place.
"We discern no privacy interest protected by the Fourth Amendment that is invaded when police attach a device to the outside of a vehicle, as long as the information obtained is the same as could be gained by the use of other techniques that do not require a warrant," he wrote.
Although police obtained a warrant in this case, it wasn't needed, he added.
Larry Dupuis, legal director of the ACLU of Wisconsin, said using GPS to track someone's car goes beyond observing them in public and should require a warrant.
"The idea that you can go and attach anything you want to somebody else's property without any court supervision, that's wrong," he said. "Without a warrant, they can do this on anybody they want."
So, what the real issue? Surveillance? Like it or not, that's legal. A cop can follow you all day long, so far as I know, as long as it doesn't amount to what a judge would call harassment. (That said, a judge's threshold and mine are probably quite different.)
Or is the real issue as the ACLU says, the attachment of a (police) device to property without court supervision?
I'm going with the ACLU on this one. Bond used a homer(*) 45 years ago in Goldfinger, and that was cool - or so we thought, because the of the target. But when I think now that the pursuer had a license to kill - I wonder if the future shouldn't be protected very, very carefully.
(* - Yep, they called it a homer in the movie. Nonetheless, cue Simpsons' jokes in ...3...2...)
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
So when/if I find such a device on my car it belongs to me doesn't it? And I'm not giving it back. And I'm not paying any bill they send me.
Isn't this a moot point with mobile phones?
Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.
How can warrantless GPS tracking be legal while warrantless car searching is illegal.
Police don't need a warrant to follow a car, and in my opinion, GPS tracking is more akin to tailing a car than searching through it. I'm not thrilled by this ruling, but it doesn't seem blatantly unconstitutional.
I'm not quite sure you're correct there. It's rather ironic that the case here involved someone suspected of stalking. Stalking also can be no more than following someone around and watching them in public places, yet it's something most areas have laws against. The only difference here is that the "stalker" is a police officer. Do you have any doubts that if it were found that the person suspected of "stalking" had covertly put GPS trackers on his victim's cars, they wouldn't nail him in a second? It would seem to me that if this type of behavior would be potentially criminal if done by someone who's not a police officer, it should take a warrant for a police officer to engage in it.
The clear intent of the Fourth Amendment is that the police can't pry into our lives without convincing a judge they have probable cause to believe we're involved in a crime. Even then, they can't just fish, they have to tell the judge exactly what crime, why they believe we're involved in it, and what evidence they believe their search will find.
Just because technology may now allow them to do such prying without physically kicking in a door doesn't mean we should allow surveillance on anyone at any time. As far as I'm concerned, gathering data on a specific person's movements, habits, etc., through surveillance, is a type of search (one is checking into that person's personal life, using methods that would routinely be thought to be invasive even if they are in public, and ironically here most of those methods would trigger the very anti-stalking laws being enforced here), and should be subject to Fourth Amendment protection, including the requirement for a warrant.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
I've got a better idea: demand to see a warrant to search the car when they come back to get it.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
It's not illegal for me to follow someone around if I'm on public property.
It's only illegal after they have told me to stop it and show emotional distress or physical threats as a reason.
As the court said, the use would be legal as long as the same information could have been gathered using normal observational techniques. There are plenty of opinions regarding this type of public activity, and there will be plenty more.
The Constitution provides only guarantees against unreasonable search and seizure. There has to be a balance between protecting against fishing expeditions and letting people with a preponderance of evidence get away because of delays in getting warrants. A police officer can walk past a car and look into it and if he see's a dead body, he can open the car and search it. If he sees a what could be drugs, he may have to go get a search warrant. One is a reasonable search, there is a body with pools of blood in the back seat. The other is not, the white powder could be sugar.
Police have always been able to 'tail' suspects. I feel this is no different. If police start attaching GPS devices to cars of people not accused of any crimes 'just to see where he goes' and then arresting them for speeding, I'm sure the courts will toss those out using exactly the same type of finding.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Now suppose they just put these devices on everyone's car, and used them to send remote speeding tickets and other such nonsense...
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
What's the next step? All vehicles will be required to have a government controlled GPS device.
In some places, and for some people, standard advice if you find a "device" attached to your car is to call out the bomb (disposal) squad...
Now doing that for a police gps tracker is going to waste a lot of police time but finding an unknown device under your car is legitiamte reason to call them out. In the US you could probably then sue them for emotional distress or something for thinking someone has put a bomb under your car. That would probably be more lucrative than ebaying the tracker as well...
I am not a lawyer... but,
Modern tort law states.
Intrusion upon seclusion occurs when a perpetrator intentionally intrudes, physically, electronically, or otherwise, upon the private space, solitude, or seclusion of a person, or the private affairs or concerns of a person, by use of the perpetrator's physical senses or by electronic device or devices to oversee or overhear the person's private affairs, or by some other form of investigation, examination, or observation intrude upon a person's private matters if the intrusion would be highly offensive to a reasonable person.
Unless this does not apply to LEO...
In theory you could expand this ruling to include monitoring of a persons latptop as long as they where not at home, to view connections made but not the actual communication, perhaps extending to his communication. Or even extended to snooping any wireless communication that can be received in a public place, even using basic encryption that is known to be compromised ie wep etc. (read below)
The argument which is kinda valid, is that the information of placing a tracking device can be obtained by following the person, hence the argument that it tracked him into a non private place IE his garage, while in theory a violation of privacy is still info that could be obtained visually from public view.
To me this appears to be spirit vs letter of the law issue. The letter of the law does make this type of tracking legal, but is that really the Spirit of the Law... I can see lots of loopholes extending from this ruling.
---In a time of Chimpanzees I was a Monkey.
This isn't a cut and dried situation. Police need a warrant to search your house. There is no question in this matter. The Constitution is pretty clear on the matter, and there's loads of case law. However they don't need a warrant to conduct surveillance on your house. They are free to park on the street and watch what goes on. For that matter, so are private citizens. I can park near you house and watch you if I like.
So that's where the argument that it is fine comes from. This isn't a search, they aren't looking through your car, this is surveillance, they are just watching where you car goes. They could legally do this by simply following your car, so one could argue this is just an extension of that.
Now please don't think I'm advocating this, just saying that it isn't a clear situation.
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.
So when/if I find such a device on my car it belongs to me doesn't it? And I'm not giving it back. And I'm not paying any bill they send me.
If I find such a device on my car, not only shall I not return it nor pay for it I shall feel free to destroy it, as I did not put it there, and do not want it there.
Police have always been able to 'tail' suspects. I feel this is no different. If police start attaching GPS devices to cars of people not accused of any crimes 'just to see where he goes' and then arresting them for speeding, I'm sure the courts will toss those out using exactly the same type of finding.
You, oddly enough, fail to see the problem differentiating both situations.
The act of tailing a suspect by a police officer requires use of manforce, which prevents it from being widely abused.
Given the constantly decreasing costs of electronics manufacture, even if not now, there will be a point where it becomes possible to constantly monitor large part of the population without extraordinary expenses. Especially if you are doing this to simply gather data on people in case sometimes you decide to go after a particular individual.
I fail to see how this is difficult to envision.
Better yet, stick it on a truck, preferably one traveling over the road; or leave it on a city bus or subway.
I can thin of even more creative scenarios:
-- Cruise by the local donut shop just before dawn and stick it on a cop's car
-- Attach it to someone's boat when they appear to be about to hit the lake for some fishing
-- Package it up and mail it to some random destination, preferably in an obscure country
-- I dunno...if it's small and light enough, tie it onto a migrating Canadian goose?
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
If this is legal for the police, I presume it is legal for anyone else who wishes to track someone. So, with that thought, here is something great for valentine's day: lingerie equipped with GPS tracking. The "boyfriend" version is bound to be more popular because of the strategically placed bulge.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
When over time GPS tracking becomes "normal observational techniques", would the police not then be able to ticket the driver for speeding? Right now a police cruiser that is tailing someone can give them a ticket for speeding. If GPS tracking is thought of as the same as tailing, why would it be different. Right now people may see a difference, how about in 10 years? how about 25 years?
Right now there is a limit on how many people can be trailed by a cruiser based on actual numbers of the police force. How does this translate to GPS tracking? Seems like some over zealous politician could get thru funding to have one tracker per citizen.
Or better yet, putting GPS on police cars.
Police have always been able to 'tail' suspects. I feel this is no different.
Except that tailing you does not need them to "secretly attach a GPS device" on your property. Yep. Not different at all.
How about skipping the car and implanting the tracker on, say, your shoulder? Or if that's too invasive, require you to carry the device at all times?
Send your spendthrift head of state this
But simply attaching something temporarily to your car in a way that doesn't diminish your car's value in any way? I'm not aware of any law generally preventing that.
I'd say a GPS tracker considerably diminishes the car's value as a getaway vehicle.
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
I think a good measure of what a the police can do without a warrant, is what a normal person can do without a warrant. I can't tap the Judges calls, therefore if a cop wants to tap my phone they should need a warrant. If I can't get the GPS logs of the Judges car, then a cop should need a warrant to do the same to me. If this is information our public servants feel we should not have about them, then there *is* an expectation of privacy on that information.
I think enforcement of this type of equality of "public" information will keep Judges and cops in line better in general. Set it into law that as soon as the Police don't need a warrant for some information, we get the information too about them and their families.
Of course in the real world YMMV.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
If the courts claim that GPS tracking doesn't require a warrant, it would be "reasonable" to track every vehicle to improve public safety by automatically enforcing 100% compliance with traffic laws.
Really the decision is bizarre. Are the police allowed to bug your car since you're in public? Is it OK for you to put a GPS tracker on your girlfriend's car?
Or better yet, putting GPS on police cars.
and give the public access to them sot that robberies can happen without cops.
Or better yet, putting GPS on police cars.
This is actually a very good idea. With all these invasions of privacy imposed on citizens, the police should be subjected to such surveillance as well. How about civilian squads monitoring the movements and actions of police units? Think of it as a kind of inverted neighbourhood watch. Whenever a cop roughs someone up, a police-watcher would be there with a camera to put it all on tape. Try to negate that in court!
I've always felt that way about how they sometimes use canine units to search for drugs. At least in the USA, it would be illegal for a cop to randomly search your car for no reason even if he did find drugs. But if that same officer has a dog and the dog starts barking at your car, he can now legally charge you with whatever contraband he finds. To me those two situations are exactly alike; the dog in this case is just the device with which the search is performed. Yet one is legal and the other is not.
I guess you might call this legalism or Phariseeism, in that both situations are the same except for a minor technicality. Because of that technicality (whether the cop uses his own eyes to search or the dog's nose to do the same thing) they're somehow considered completely different situations for which different rules are applied. I can't imagine that any judge or other authority who actually respects freedom would ever support this. I have to assume that all of these fine distinctions and splitting of hairs are to provide excuses so that the cops can do whatever it is they want to do while completely ignoring the intent behind the Fourth Amendment.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Random comment:
That last idea isn't the greatest, because if I recall my (was it 6th grade?) text book from several years ago, geese are strong enough to break your arm if they decide to hit you with their wing. They also bite.
Wha? Canadian geese range from 5-14lb (3.2-5.5kg) in weight. The largest goose is supposedly around 20lb. How's that supposed to work? Do you understand the concepts of mass, velocity, and energy?
I can see how one might break your arm if ... shot out of a cannon.
A host is a host from coast to coast...
Unless it's down, or slow, or fails to POST!
How's that supposed to work?
That depends if it's an African Canadian goose, or a European Canadian goose.
NO.
The right to free association also imbues privacy of that association. Such tracking without probable cause violates privacy, free speech, due process, and is high in calories.
Police have a right to follow me, as I have a right to make it difficult for them to do so without probable cause. My presence is my business, and not theirs.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Unfortunately, police are granted many powers that citizens are not given.
Just try to hold someone against their will and search them, for example. Or wear a gun on your hip here in Chicago. Or force someone off the road. Or force a hooker to service you with the threat of arrest.
By the way, I live near the Chicago Police Academy and walk my dog by there regularly. A few weeks ago, there were two huge Blackwater semis there and their were a bunch of dudes in paramilitary gear with no insignias giving training to police cadets.
It's comforting to know that we now have mercenaries training police. It's bad enough that we allow these mercenaries to represent the US in armed conflict. I wonder if besides their (extremely high) salaries they are allowed all the plunder and rape they want. Thank you, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld for renewing and rewarding this great tradition.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The GP's idea is brilliant.
you had me at #!
We agree that when you're out in public, your whereabouts can be recorded. However, adding a GPS unknowingly to a vehicle isn't covered here. That's the whole point.
And yes, there is no specific right to privacy in the constitution. Now learn about how privacy is imbued by the first, second, fourth, fifth, and fourteenth amendments.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
You'd think video evidence would be enough to expose and convict police officers on a power trip. But a look at the Robert Dziekanski case that many Canadians have been following for the past year and a half shows otherwise. There is a video of the incident that has been made public by a witness at the scene. Immediately after the incident, the RCMP made multiple statements that were blatantly inconsistent with the video evidence (e.g., it was originally claimed that Dziekanski kept throwing objects around after the RCMP arrived, which was conclusively shown to be false by the video.) and testimony from other emergency response personnel (e.g., the RCMP claimed that an officer was properly monitoring Dziekanski's vitals until medical help arrived. It turned out that the officer in question did not renew his expired first aid certification, and a fireman later testified that the RCMP officers barred him from any attempt to check Dziekanski's vitals.). The Crown prosecutors opted to not pursue criminal charges related to the death of Robert Dziekanski. There is an inquiry investigating the circumstances in the case that is currently underway, but the prosecutors have thus far maintained that there is no reasonable prospect of conviction. In fact, the RCMP threatened not to participate in the inquiry until the Crown decided whether or not to pursue criminal charges.
Of course, the whole situation has not been resolved yet, as the judge overseeing the inquiry may be able to make recommendations based on his findings. But this situation has left many Canadians with very shaky feelings about the RCMP force as a whole.
And to drive the point home even further: They don't have to negate video evidence in court if they can keep it out of court.
Stalking is legal now?
Who would you like to train them? Kindergarten teachers?
Actually, no, I don't want kindergarten teachers training them. On the other hand, I'm not too thrilled with police being taught military responses as the default response.
You see, there is a difference between a soldier and a peace officer. A soldier does what he/she has to in order to stay alive when they know that they are going to be shot at. They are basically taught to keep their weapons loose in their holsters / ready in their hands, because they expect that they are going to be using them. A peace officer is supposed to uphold the law and protect the citizenry (even if some of them may not seem to deserve it, but that's another aspect that we needn't go into at this point).
Now, MP (Military Police) receive the additional training of police in conjunction with their military training, and those are the sort of people that I would have NO trouble with helping to train civilian police.
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
-- Cruise by the local donut shop just before dawn and stick it on a cop's car
Later, GPS evidence reveals you visited half a dozen crime scenes that day, including returning to the scene that sparked the original investigation!