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Massachusetts Police Can't Place GPS On Autos Without Warrant
pickens writes "The EFF reports that the Supreme Court of Massachusetts has held in Commonwealth v. Connolly that police may not place GPS tracking devices on cars without first getting a warrant, reasoning that the installation of the GPS device was a seizure of the suspect's vehicle. Search and seizure is a legal procedure used in many civil law and common law legal systems whereby police or other authorities and their agents, who suspect that a crime has been committed, do a search of a person's property and confiscate any relevant evidence to the crime. According to the decision, 'when an electronic surveillance device is installed in a motor vehicle, be it a beeper, radio transmitter, or GPS device, the government's control and use of the defendant's vehicle to track its movements interferes with the defendant's interest in the vehicle notwithstanding that he maintains possession of it.' Although the case only protects drivers in Massachusetts, another recent state court case, People v. Weaver in the State of New York, also held that because modern GPS devices are far more powerful than beepers, police must get a warrant to use the trackers, even on cars and people traveling the public roads."
is that there had to be a case where the Police overstepped their authority, and did this without a warrant, before this question of law could be settled.
That's a definite flaw in our legal system: someone has to be abused (at least) once before the courts can rule.
You are now free to drive around the Commonwealth.
With apologies to Southwest Airlines.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
There are terrorists, pedophiles and drug dealers out there. Any arguments for civil liberties and the rule of law are automatically invalid!
May the Maths Be with you!
You cannot be forced to provide testimony or evidence against yourself. By tracking your vehicle, the state is forcing you to disclose your location at all times against your will, which is also a violation of the 5th.
This is the same reason why you cannot be forced to reveal the encryption keys on your computer by your own will.
Would this law come into play in the use of bait cars? On one side the police would be tracking a suspect via GPS installed on a car without a warrant. On the other side it would be the cops own vehicle instead of the suspects. Common sense tells me that bait cars would be perfectly fine, but I can still see a car thief using this ruling as a defense.
This type of weakening of police powers is precisely why groups like the Yakuza are able to get away with so much in Japan.
Gojira, too.
So you think it's okay to just put GPS tracking devices in each person? The device would do nothing more than automate following each everywhere. The device could be put it at birth and the owner may never had any knowledge of it.
Stuff like this would make it real easy to round up those people who don't quite agree with the current government.
Precisely. For example, it's clear that a concealed spy camera, placed discretely in people's living rooms or bedrooms can have no effect on their normal behavior or use of these rooms. So, it's clear that no one should need warrants to install such devices. To enforce such a debilitating requirement would give "empower" criminal citizens to do as they please within the privacy of their own homes. Clearly, an unjust and unfair outcome.
May the Maths Be with you!
I volunteer you to be the first to have a GPS shoved up your ass.
Suspects. The word is suspects. You cannot assume that the people being tracked are criminals. Besides, the ruling states that a warrant must be obtained, not that the police can't track cars with GPS. It provides valuable oversight on a police power that can easily be abused. I live in Massachusetts and this ruling actually makes me feel safer.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Neither is this a matter of illegal search and seizure, as the movements of a car can be tracked directly by having a car follow it everywhere. The tracking device does nothing more than make this an automated task.
You cannot follow them onto private property without some type of warrant. It's not the same.
This type of weakening of police powers
It's not weakening anything. It's a clarification of the boundaries. They shouldn't have been able to do it to start with.
By skirting the very edges of the law
Then change the law. Don't legislate from the bench.
Suppose the technology becomes so cheap that a hundred thousand motorists can be tracked by GPS in any given city, much less any given state. Why wouldn't the police want to deploy every available tracking device in a fishing expedition, even if no suspicion of wrong-doing guides their choice of who to track? The odds are that eventually someone innocent will be in the wrong place at an inauspicious time. I wouldn't want to be that person, then have to explain how "opportunity" is irrelevant, especially if there is any vaguely tenable argument for the presence of means and motive.
Let them get warrants. Let there be some oversight. The technology hasn't been banned. Presumption of innocence shouldn't begin in the courtroom.
Why should the police be worried about getting a warrent? It is not as if officers are walking around with GPS devices to plant on suspects they suddenly see. No, these are planned operations with justification. Then why not get a warrent?
Police should not be wasting public resources nor possessing and exercising excessive discretion in "following hunches". Get the warrent. Its' easy.
But the dude was still busted on cocaine possession, and the conviction held. However, kudos to the Mass Supreme Court for pointing to errs in police ways. The cops just have to get more creative then that to track down whoever, and quit trying to cut corners using technology - instead they should develop better detective skills.
I think therefore I can't be ~TTNH
What if you see them putting the GPS on your car, after they have obtained a warrant? Are you allowed to take it off?
Yes, you can take off the device, just like you could take off any other part of your car. You can probably even destroy it if you want.
There's actually a guy who discovered a tracker, destroyed it, was arrested by the police for destroying their property, and he won, but an important part of the case was that there was no identifying mark on the tracker identifying it as police property.
They knew he knew it was a police tracker, but could not prove it. (And he, of course, didn't have to testify if he did or not.) Hence, legally, he could do whatever he wanted to it, just like he could to any other part of his car.
So, unless they've started labeling them 'property of the police', you can destroy them if you want, or just claim ownership of them. I mean, as far as you know, it's just some part of your car. They have to prove you knew it was owned by someone else.
If it is labeled as owned by someone else, it is legally 'mislaid property', which is when the owner put something somewhere on purpose and didn't come back to get it. (As opposed to, for example, dropping it, which is 'lost property'.)
You are required to turn 'mislaid property' over the owner of the premise it's found on. Aka, the owner of the car. After which, the owner of the car has to keep it for a specific amount of time in case the person comes back to claim it. If the owner does not come back to claim it in a specific amount of time, the car owner now legally owns it.
See your state laws for your requirements, and if you have any obligation to attempt to find the owner, or notify the police. (Hilariously, if you are required to notify the local police, some police departments are so discombobulated you could probably notify the people in charge of keeping track of lost property you'd found some GPS tracker owned by 'the police', and that would never get forward to anyone who would actually claim it.)
But, regardless of whether you know it's owned by someone else, and what the laws say about mislaid property, you can certainly remove it. It's your car, you can unattach anything from it you want. (Although you'll get a ticket if you remove headlights or mufflers or whatever and then attempt to operate it on a public road.;)
But now there are a lot of people flabberghasted I'd be saying this about official police stuff. Well, legally, once you know about a warrant, you can't interfere with it, so if you knew the police had installed it on your car as part of a legal search, you couldn't remove it.
But this requires them actually informing you of the warrant, which they obviously don't do for secret tracking. Otherwise, the law allows you to assume they absentmindedly installed a GPS tracker in your car while peering under your car, and forgot to pick it up when they stood up.
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