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GPS Tracking Without a Warrant Declared Legal
jnaujok writes "The Ninth Circuit court has declared that attaching a GPS tracker to your car, as it sits in your driveway, or by extension on a public street, and then using it to monitor every one of your movements, is totally legal, and can be performed by the police without needing a warrant. So, if you live in the Western United States, big brother has arrived."
I think people care, but people are also aware that the only ruling that matters will be SCOTUS. Currently, this is a hot issue in various courts and they all rule differently. SCOTUS will make the call that defines this issue.
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Then they won't see ya!
No, they don't! The "police" have no special powers other than exactly what statutes give them under special circumstances (arrest, crime in progress, etc). Since I do not know of any statute granting GPS powers, the only way the police can do this legally is because everyone can.
This is an important distinction between the American & British (&other systems): In the US, the government derives its' powers by delegation from The People. If The People do not have a power, they cannot delegate it. Under the UK (&other) systems, the Sovereign holds all powers which S/He graciously grants to the people,
starting with Magna Carta. The Sovereign still holds other power unavailable to individuals.
You are looking at this wrong, here in the USA the laws do not tell us what we can do, they tell us what we can not do.
So, if it is not considered a violation of the 5th amendment and there is no law saying "You can not attach GPS devices to police cars" or "You can not monitor police" or any variation there of, then it is legal.
The trend is towards cellular phone style devices; GSM or CDMA radios with GPS unit. No keypad or screen required so they can be quite small. Battery life is an issue, however they go to sleep of they aren't moving so they only need to work for the duration of a trip.
This has already been circumvented.
So the cops are going after lay citizens and stupid crooks, a fair number of which really do deserve to be caught.
http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/opinions/view_subpage.php?pk_id=0000010204
You might want to reread that self-defense clause again.
You can use deadly force to protect people and property from imminent danger. Someone poking a hand under your bumper is not that.
And there's generally going to be no way you'll prove self-defense against a cop, since you have to presume a cop is assaulting you legally unless you know specifically otherwise. you might have a chance if he's assaulting you without telling you he's a cop, but that won't work if he's under cover, since "I didn't know he was a cop" is the whole point of that. And killing a cop isn't just murder or manslaughter, it's a cop-killing, and for that you get special treatment.
I am a law abiding citizen
Until they decide you aren't.
It would cost about $300 for the tracker. The receiver would be about $1000. I used to work at a place that tracked animals via GPS / VHF collars for wildlife researchers. There were a few cases where the animal would look, shall we say, rather humanoid, but in all of those cases that was a willing animal.
Anyway, that $300 would get you a GPS unit with antenna, a processor board with memory, and a VHF transmitter that sends out the location. They'd be able to read that location on the receiver. The battery would be a Lithium cell and would run for up to a year. It would be potted for weather proofing. If they had reusable batteries, then you'd be able to use the units pretty much indefinitely.
It could also be set up to record your location throughout the day at intervals no finer than 1/second. (Civilian GPS refreshes that fast, and there's no way they could get their hands on milspec.) It could easily save up the data and broadcast it at a set time (like 3am when you're asleep or 4pm when you're at work) and the receiver would get all the locations you've been in the last day. It only takes about 8 bytes to store a GPS location, so an 8Mbit Flash module is enough to store a year's worth of locations. This would all be on a board roughly 1" x 1.5" x 0.5", plus battery and antenna.
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has also ruled that a warrant is required. Reported here on /. less than 20 days ago.
This decision is bound for the SCOTUS because you can not have different laws in one part of the country as compared to another part due to the Equal Protection Clause.
The Ninth is the most over-ruled circuit in the entire country. Stay tuned.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Scalia and Thomas voted to uphold sodomy laws. They're quite happy to be authoritarian when they feel like it.
If this is any example, they are not ignored. Its just more likely you'll be threatened, arrested, and/or have the shit beat out of you for simply asking about a complaint form.
I forget which video its on but they have a lengthy segment of undercover police simply walking into a station and asking if there is a complaint form. They are all seriously harassed and intimidated. The undercover person usually attempts to retreat at this point. And when they fail to identify themselves or reveal the nature of their intended complaint, they frequently get stalked, threatened, and arrested.
Scary shit and hard to believe you're in the US. And according to the video producers, that series of videos constitutes a tiny portion of the video they had at the time. And since those videos have been released, they have said their repository of like videos have exploded.