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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.'"
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
If it wasn't secured to your car with duct tape, you can probably be pretty sure it wasn't done by the police.
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?
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.