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Court Rejects Warrantless GPS Tracking
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.'"
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.
I was hoping i could play spot the gps tracker with my friends, or also my other favorite, Who wants to faraday the bottom of their car!?
Go EFF!
Thus increasing the cost, meaning they won't do it.
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.
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
You've noticed that Bush is out of office now, right? The new guy hasn't exactly shut down attempts to spy on us. He also supports Bush's warrantless wiretapping policy, one of Bush's most constitutionally questionable decisions.
Revive the Constitution.
So who, exactly, wanted to assert this right ? Names, please, not agencies.
Huh? Where are the Democrats fighting for privacy? This isn't aisle issue, it's an establishment issue. They all support warrantless wiretapping and every other form of privacy intrusion.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
Don't use logic on these people. It'll fail every time.
The bottom line is that for as "liberal" as Obama is coming off it makes me wonder how fucked we really are. the Tea Party has too much NeoCon blood in it to bring the GOP back around. The love affair continues on with the current idiot in the Whitehouse... Civil rights abuses are going to be winked at for generations if something isn't done in the next 2 or 3 election cycles.
We're really fucked.
And they'll just tail you night and day, just as if they had a GPS on your car, and they won't need a warrant.
How is this about my online rights, exactly?
That takes manpower. That's not something you can do willy nilly. They'll be damn sure the person is a suspect before doing that.
Tackers can put be on a bunch of cars and automatically monitored for viewing later at cops leisure.
Meaning the GPS trackers can be used as a dragnet - let's put one on a bunch of folks' cars and see what we find regardless if they're a suspect or not. Cops then see what they think is suspicious and create a story around it (intentional or not) and now innocent guy is a suspect for a crime in the imaginations of the cops. Or innocent guy just happens to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and innocent guy is now in a bunch a legal trouble.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
I think the point is that, during the Bush years, democrats were loading bemoaning Bush's wiretapping plans and whatnot, with the implicit idea that they wouldn't have done the same in his place. Now that it's happening, they're revealed as a bunch of hypocrits.
Not that this surprises me in the slightest mind you.
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.
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.
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.
And a similar point could be made of right-wingers. As long as it was a right-wing administration they were just fine with warrantless wiretapping. Now? They're outraged!
What it really exposes is that partisans are hypocrites regardless of party or ideology.
I think your complaint is driven by paranoia.
First off, we're giving massive tax rebates for buying one of those, and for good reason. They eliminate almost all of the bad things that gasoline combustion causes. Which obviates the need for gasoline taxes, which will still apply to those who drive gasoline vehicles. We'll raise the taxes on them and force them into electric vehicles.
Second, it's much more efficient when the time comes simply to slap a bigger tax on registering a vehicle.
Third, it isn't illegal for the government to collect information about you. It's illegal for law enforcement to pry into information about you when it doesn't have probable cause that you are committing a crime. No matter who has the information or how it was collected.
it's just a sopeana away.
Look, it's subpoena...or if you insist on using the Americanized form which is so ugly that most Americans don't even use it, subpena.
Sopeana sounds like a Mexican pastry.
One of the assumptions we deal with, or rather fail to deal with, is we assume the government has "better things to do". We may be small fry, but there is an enabling going on. You're only small fry until you've pissed someone off for whatever lawful reason. (Disagreements happen even when both parties are being lawful).
Out west, they think "Washington is so far away" but really they aren't anymore.
We think GPS-tracking is based on public information....
But all these ideas are based on the assumption that the government has better people to go after. Having a limited resource like man power, assures the biggest offenders are handled first, and on down the line to the jay-walker. But as computers can work 24/7/365, and never forgets, and technology gets cheaper, the force of the law gets more prevalent.
Given enough information, you can identify a person at a crosswalk, using the intersection cameras and mail them a fine. If it gets in the mail soon enough, it'll be at their house before they get home.
So historically speaking there is a notion of "scope" or "reach" (as typified by "long arm of the law"). As we get more technology, it becomes easier to become a victim of government. Even if they don't act on what they know about you (cost-benefit) they can still use it at a later date. Most of us I am sure have some unflattering FBI files, collected opportunistically. Drunken Facebook postings and blog posts, its all there to be compiled and added to your dossier...
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Don't confuse what Obama is doing with what Bush did.
Bush committed a crime by suborning those illegal wiretaps.
Obama is trying to avoid having to prosecute Bush and his administration for that crime, and to avoid having the government sued over what Bush did.
But when it comes right down to it, and he can't avoid it, that's what will happen. And it won't be Obama's fault.
Enjoy your healthcare.
Gas taxes have nothing to do with "the bad things" about gasoline. 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.
I think there are two other factors to consider as well that make GPS tracking bad.
A GPS would be able to track you while on private property, a ranch maybe, a couple of agents couldn't do that so in such a case a GPS is more invasive of a person privacy.
Another factor is if someone else drove the car that had the GPS attached, they would be tracked even though they are not "a person of interest". This would be problematic if you tried to use a GPS track of someones car to place a specific person at a location at any time.
In regards to Police, in their minds EVERYONE is guilty of something and its their job to catch you, and they feel its alright to use every trick in the book to get you to say something they can use against you.
Remember its "Anything you say can and will be used used against you".
Interesting to Watch.
I don't think you understand what the gas tax is used for. It is there to help pay for the maintenance of the roads and highway system, electric cars do not obviate the need for road maintenance. Hijacking it to push a public policy agenda is a mistake I'm not going to get into here (too far off topic). Increasing the registration tax to cover the maintenance needs places a greater portion of the burden on those who don't drive very far compared to the current method, the gas tax is not perfect for this either but those who use the roads more do pay more on average.
As far as the government holding information about you, remember that knowledge can just as easily be used to your detriment as it can to your benefit. As history shows us, trusting the government to always do the right thing doesn't tend to work out so well.
Think about it. Right now people are taxed @ ~$.20 - $.30 cents a gallon in fuel taxes that in most states is already figured into the list price of the gas at pump. And gasoline taxes don't go to pay for cleaning up the environment. They go to building/maintaining roads (or at least that what the politicos say...whether it does or not is another debate)
Very few people think about the fact that the gallon of gas is really $2.30 plus $.25 in tax. No, they just see $2.55, pump and go. The cost of the tax is hidden to most peoples eyes. So they pay $3 - $5 every time they fill up their tank in taxes x number of times per month without even thinking about it. Probably amounts to $700 - $1000 per driver per year depending on the type of car and number of miles driven.
Well if suddenly you're asking those people to fork over $1000 at one time when they go to register the car, you're going to really piss people off when they see it in one lump sum. Voters won't go for it because suddenly they see it as another big chunk of tax. Yes, they were paying about the same before, but at $5 a pop, they never paid any attention to it before. But when you have to write a check for 4 figures, suddenly people notice.
Hence, if you replace that fuel tax with a "road use tax" via tolls or GPS tracking of how much you drove and split those bills up into a monthly tab at $30 - $50 per month, then people once again start to consider a monthly bill just like their utilities, cell phone, etc. and less as a "tax". Plus this method also gives the government the ability to place a tracking device on your car. The republican voting base likes it because it can be used to track "evil people" (Terrorist/Gangs/Drug Dealers/Child Molesters/Commies/whomeverisevilatthemomet). The Democratic base likes it because it can be used to tax people, especially people driving a lot of miles. Because those electric cars are going to be powered predominately by coal for the next 20 - 25 years.
I volunteered in college for a couple state reps/senators and a US congressmen. And we were having this very same discussion only replace electric cars with natural gas powered cars back then. They did pass a "a natural gas powered car costs you $600 per year to register." Even that was enough of a turn off to keep all but the proponents of such technology from converting their vehicle to propane/LNG.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
This isn't hard to do with existing technology, GPS not required. Just require drivers to purchase those transmitters and put up readers along the road. Like a toll, it will tell you who drove by what.
In Maine, it was called TransPass for a while now EasyPass which works all the way down to Florida, with some pockets of resistance here and there.
Yes, as alternative fuel cars proliferate, the gas tax won't work. I predict that the government will increasingly tax truckers first, for various reasons. Then the excise tax on alt fuel cars will skyrocket, and eventually you will report your odometer reading and calculate a tax based on that. If you underreport the odometer, you will pay for it when you sell the vehicle. If you scrap the vehicle, you will pay then, or when you buy a replacement. Makes sense, as gas tax is essentially a tax on mileage, though I pay more for my Explorer than you do for your Prius, and I'm not sure the 'damage' I do to the roads is proportionally worse than what you do. Truckers have always paid higher fuel taxes on that premise alone.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Registration can easily be taxed monthly with some months using estimates and other months requiring an odometer reading which is verified come inspection time. Simple enough and no $1000 lump sum fees.
And Obama's policy on wiretaps and surveillance is left-wing? There's not a nickel's worth difference between them. this is not Left v Right, Republicans v Democrats, it is Us v Them.
You're losing this argument.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
You know what's really asinine about that kind of idea? You could just use the fucking odometer to measure usage and it'd work just fine!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
New Defcon contest: odometer hacks. Plug into the little interface jack under your dash, and viola! Abatement!
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Right now we have no viable alternative. The Teabaggers aren't it. Most of those people are just Republican activists trying to push us even further to the right.
Sadly, I have to agree. My local tea party has remained loyal to the original concept of the modern tea parties, which is just to protest government intrusion in general, but many of the larger ones have become extensions of the neocons. Basically, if they create a formal organization or elect a leadership, they're in opposition to the spirit of tea parties. Without any formal leadership, the opportunity for corruption is practically nil; with leadership, practically guaranteed.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
Why bother with email? A civil fine can be automatically withdrawn directly from a bank account, credit or debit card. Much more convenient for everyone this way.
No, it didn't. It wasn't about what the government could do with the info, it was about what it could legally do with the info.
And I don't mind law enforcement knocking on the door of people who atypically amass explosive components. Those are the people they should be asking questions. And the more times it's unnecessary the better.
I would mind a lot if they knocked-IN my door for that. But to do that they need a warrant. Which moots all of these arguments, since with a warrant they can tap your phones, bug your car, install cameras in your bathroom, etc., etc. And to get a warrant they need a little more than a couple of receipts; they need to show probable cause, and just possessing those things isn't probable cause.
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.
If the guy doesn't have qualms calling you, a U.S. citizen, a terrorist and placing you on a CIA hit list, and then try to deny your father the right to hire an attorney on your behalf, somehow I doubt he's going to think twice about tapping your phone without a warrant.