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Court Rejects Warrantless GPS Tracking

Posted by kdawson on from the don't-tag-me-bro dept.

The EFF is trumpeting a victory in a case in which it and the ACLU filed an amicus brief. "The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit today firmly rejected government claims that federal agents have an unfettered right to install Global Positioning System (GPS) location-tracking devices on anyone's car without a search warrant. ... The court agreed that such round-the-clock surveillance required a search warrant based on probable cause. ...the court noted: 'When it comes to privacy... the whole may be more revealing than its parts.'"

15 of 226 comments (clear)

  1. I'm still curious by FooAtWFU · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What happens if you find such a device on your car? Sure, you can call the police because there's a suspicious item on your car (which may be dangerous!! what if it exploded?) but do you think they would say something like "oh no, that's ours!" -- or could they tell you to leave it there?

    What happens when you run a packet dump and notice a government spyware program? whee! ...

    --
    The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
    1. Re:I'm still curious by Monkeedude1212 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Look, I know that IT professionals get stereotyped as the guys who ruin peoples lives by either making their work a living hell with Windows Updates breaking every application - or by exposing some personal emails that shouldn't have been sent on your work outlook account, or even by neglecting to upgrade you off of that old Windows NT box.

      But really, how bad does it have to get before you start suspecting that someone might have planted an explosive on your car?

    2. Re:I'm still curious by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I used to installed GPS tracking devices for the Feds - so I can help you out. These devices are very rarely deployed - fairly expensive and time consuming, even w/o the warrant, which most Agencies have required as a matter of policy anyway for the last ten years. Yeah, sometimes the Feds anticipate rulings like this and do more than required so they won't lose evidence on appeal. Get over it. If you find one on your vehicle - you've earned it - and you won't be scratching your head as to why. Either you've been REAL busy doing some fairly bad stuff or your car is routinely used by others to do so. Knowing who was in the tracked vehicle (if the GPS records are simply being logged and downloaded) is a problem - so you're probably under physical surveillance too and the box is just to reel you back in if you get beyond visual range. Yeah, you can take it off, throw it away, turn it in at the local cop shop - you can even put it someone else' car. Won't matter - you'll soon be in line for an upgrade - that you WON'T find. And as for detecting .gov spyware with your packet sniffer. Good luck with that.

    3. Re:I'm still curious by Caerdwyn · · Score: 5, Interesting

      A long while ago (about 1996) I noticed unusual traffic coming in to my hobbyist server. Things that nowadays are just part of the background noise: port scans, SYNs to nonexistant hosts (I had a /28 block on a fractional T1. NerdPeen ACTIVATE!), that sort of thing. The source IP address in question then crawled my website and connected to my SMTP server and sent mail to itself (wisdom such as "don't be an open relay" was not widespread at the time... my diagnosic skills were better than my security skills at the time).

      A few nslookups and whois later, and a traceroute or two, and I was at Langley. Huh. Was someone there doing something? Or was it spoofed in some way? It's not like I had ever done anything interesting in my life other than flip a significantly-non-stock VW Rabbit onto its roof and host a website for friends to post their dirty pictures. Hmmm, maybe that was it. 007 wanted pr0n!

      A few emails and one phone call later and I was talking to an instructor at Langley who was teaching basic network forensics. He said they were choosing random domains then learning what they could about them and presenting that knowledge as a classroom exercise, and apologized if their was any disruption; he said it was only an attempt to do basic recon of non-NATted networks, not penetration (insert joke here). My response was something to the effect of "OK, no problem, I understand. But... I noticed . I shouldn't have. And I'm a total amateur at this. If your students are going to be able to do their jobs, they need to be less obvious about it."

      If you find a BatBug on your car, the cops need to know of their incompetence. Then send it to Gizmodo!

      --
      Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
    4. Re:I'm still curious by Caerdwyn · · Score: 2, Interesting

      In 1996, everyone was much less sophisticated in their understanding of IP networking and its exploitability (as evidenced by me having an open relay, no firewall, and all hosts fully exposed to the Internet without NAT). We look upon it in horror now, a decade and a half since, but consider. What network security practices did ANYONE have, other than "have good passwords and don't have your FTP incoming directory world-writable"? Who had a firewall in their house? Linux was on kernel 1.1, and few had even heard of it. SCO still had more engineers than lawyers. Steve Jobs still had a spleen. Network access was dialup or if you were lucky ISDN (except for people with big NerdPeens). Windows was on Win95 (with the worst TCP/IP stack in the history of everything, prompting many people to download replacement stacks).

      Yeah, the instructor wasn't all that good. In fairness, neither was anyone else. The story does not reflect what training our best information warfare specialists ARE receiving; it's what ordinary Air Force net admins were being taught when the whole concept of the Internet being open to anyone but universities and the DoD was still a fresh idea.

      We've learned quite a bit in 14 years. I'm a little wiser, and it's a good bet that the gentlecritters at Langley are a LOT wiser.

      --
      Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
  2. Nice one by JackSpratts · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Go EFF!

  3. Re:Way to block Bush and the Republicans by ducomputergeek · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Just wait until more electric cars are on the road requiring some type of toll or other form of tracking so that people can be sent "use taxes/road taxes" since folks aren't fueling up with liquid fuels that are normally taxed for this purpose. Then if they want to know where you've been, it's just a sopeana away. Or more than likely, the laws will be written to where all law enforcement has to do is file a request of information.

    --
    "The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
  4. So far so good. by Local+ID10T · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Lets see how this goes on appeal.

    This is the kind of issue that winds up before the supreme court. It is simple, and obvious, but somebody is going to argue it to their last breath.

    --
    "You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
    1. Re:So far so good. by dgatwood · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Lets see how this goes on appeal.

      You know, when I read the headline, I expected ninth circuit. I mean, I'd be shocked if this decision had come out of the 4th or 5th, but even the D.C. circuit coming to that conclusion is a bit surprising, IMHO. It's not exactly a bastion of liberalism or civil liberties.

      What's particularly baffling is that the ninth actually went the other way. So it's almost certainly a sufficiently contentious issue to get certiorari. I'll be interested to see the appeal, too. It seems clear that warrantless GPS tracking could be easily abused, and that the relatively low cost and effort involved makes it a fairly significant escalation of police surveillance. On the flip side, one could legitimately argue that anything you do in a vehicle is done in a public place and that you have no expectation of privacy. So it's definitely not clear cut either way.

      I would tend to err on the side of requiring a warrant, particularly given that it is a relatively low bar and given that there is minimal chance of the decision to plant a GPS device being so time critical that a warrant could not be reasonably obtained. And if we see warrantless GPS tracking used in a sufficiently widespread way, there is substantial risk that people will employ countermeasures to jam GPS signals in and around their vehicles. The resulting mess would endanger public safety. So it is important that GPS tracking be very limited. Requiring a warrant does this. Without requiring a warrant, the temptation is too great to use GPS as a crutch in place of proper surveillance, which in the long run would be seriously detrimental to society.

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

  5. "government claims" by artg · · Score: 2, Interesting

    So who, exactly, wanted to assert this right ? Names, please, not agencies.

    1. Re:"government claims" by ducomputergeek · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Eventually it will be *DOT (with the * being your state). Got to come up with some way of taxing electric car users to use the road if they aren't paying for it in fuel taxes.

      --
      "The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
  6. Re:Way to block Bush and the Republicans by rgviza · · Score: 3, Interesting

    They're still bamboozled and think that "change" meant change as in "different".

    They still think that democrats are different than republicans in some way.

    --
    Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
  7. Re:So just use cops by mldi · · Score: 2, Interesting

    1) You can lose the cops
    2) Cops need to sleep
    3) There's not a detailed electronic record of every movement
    4) Not cost effective
    5) Cops hate it

    It's quite a bit different. Not to mention that cops tailing your car doesn't fall under the category of "electronic surveillance", and so it isn't part of the slippery slope.

    --
    If you aren't suspicious of your government's actions, you aren't doing your job as a responsible citizen.
  8. GPS tracking may be off limits all together. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    IANAL, but I keep an eye on this stuff. In many jurisdictions you can't get a search warrant in order to put a GPS on a car, because a search warrant typically requires "probable cause" to think that a specific, specified crime has been committed, and that evidence of that crime is probable to be found in a search. The warrant then specifically must list what the police are searching for, and where they are allowed to search. There are few cases where the GPS is likely to turn up proof of a specific crime.

    The problem with GPS tracking is that it's typically used more for intellegence/surveilance type stuff. You do this before you get a warrant, in order to get enough probable cause to do a search.

    In many jurisdictions police use GPS at their own discrection because they see it as equivalent to tailing, but also because they can't get a warrant. Most police are actually pretty good about getting warrants before doing stuff when they can; there's no reason not to, and it makes a case stronger.

  9. Re:Way to block Bush and the Republicans by interkin3tic · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Gas taxes are what is used to maintain the roads. A large part of the states Transportation budget comes from the revenue collected through gas taxes.

    If we go with hydrogen fuels, then obviously a tax on fuel will still be possible, and would be much easier than GPS for everyone. If we go with electric cars, then increased license and registration, increased sales tax on cars, and increased other taxes would still be an easier path to covering those expenses than GPS. If for some reason we are absolutely sold on sticking with "You pay for exactly how much you drive," I'd expect some type of correspondence with your odometer, not telling them your position at all times.

    Installing a GPS in everyone's car is the most complicated and expensive way of measuring how much one has used the roads and would face significant public opposition. Politicians usually take the path of least resistance. I think it's unlikely GPS will be trotted out as a widespread policy.