College Student Finds GPS On Car, FBI Retrieves It

mngdih writes with this excerpt from Wired: "A California student got a visit from the FBI this week after he found a secret GPS tracking device on his car, and a friend posted photos of it online. The post prompted wide speculation about whether the device was real, whether the young Arab-American was being targeted in a terrorism investigation and what the authorities would do. It took just 48 hours to find out: The device was real, the student was being secretly tracked and the FBI wanted their expensive device back ... His discovery comes in the wake of a recent ruling by the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals saying it's legal for law enforcement to secretly place a tracking device on a suspect's car without getting a warrant, even if the car is parked in a private driveway. ... 'We have all the information we needed,' they told him. 'You don't need to call your lawyer. Don't worry, you're boring.'"

Comments

Finders Keepers?

[Archangel Michael]

How about a bit of "finders keepers" and disassemble and report of the technology. Followed up by a "Does it Blend" episode !

Re:Finders Keepers?

[Iphtashu Fitz]

How about the FBI throws you in jail for destruction of government property, obstruction, and any other charges they decide to toss your way (rightfully or not)? Is the amount of time spent sitting in a cell, the money lost in lawyers fees, and the hassle of going to court really worth it?

Re:Finders Keepers?

[X0563511]

... and how about they kiss his ass, seeing as they left their property inside his for surveillance?

He's got every right (IMO) to do what he damn well pleased with it.

Re:Finders Keepers?

[Asic Eng]

Well they told him "It's federal property. It's an expensive piece, and we need it right now. [...] We're going to make this much more difficult for you if you don't cooperate." If you want to pick a fight with these thugs then call the ACLU - trying to piss them off might not be such a great idea.

Re:Finders Keepers?

[powerlord]

Yes, but how does he know that it is actually theirs?

Perhaps they are just trying to get their hands on other people's property.

Are they prepared to provide a receipt for returning the item, or some proof of ownership that he can retain a copy of to protect himself from liability.

-- Menachem

Re:Finders Keepers?

[Archangel Michael]

So what you're saying is that we've gone from "give me liberty or give me death" to "don't throw me in jail because it will make me uncomfortable".

As to your last question. YES IT IS WORTH IT. Liberty is always worth the penalty for it, the other option is to acquiesce to slavery. This is no different. Tyranny must be fought with everything we have, because the other options aren't pretty.

Re:Finders Keepers?

[adolf]

Recall the recent "found" iPhone 4 debacle:

The finder of a thing usually seems to have to make a reasonable attempt at finding the owner of an item (and "reasonable" varies quite a lot from place to place), and if it is unclaimed after 30 days, then they are entitled to keep it.

Generally speaking, YMMV, IANAL, so on, so forth.

But since the FBI asked for their widget back within 30 days, I guess that it's theirs to recover.

(Whether or not I think this is morally right is a different discussion entirely. Personally, I'd like to think that if I find a tracking widget on my car, that it's henceforth mine. However...)

Re:Finders Keepers?

[Abstrackt]

Not that I disagree with you, but there is a pretty wide gap between saying something like this on the Internet and actually following through with it in the real world.

There's obviously no way for me to know your level of life-experience but if a person is not normally subjected to direct pain and suffering or is blissfully unaware of it the amount of effort required to force them into acquiescence is minimal. Withstanding that kind of pressure isn't as simple as you make it sound.

Re:Finders Keepers?

[poetmatt]

actually, I would define subversive activities such as putting a GPS device in someone's car to track them without their consent as terrorism.

Re:Finders Keepers?

[DavidTC]

All laws about this aren't the same. There are three different kinds of laws on this topic.

There's the 'forgot to pick up' law, where you accidentally put something somewhere and forget to get it, like setting your wallet down in a checkout line.

And there's the 'dropped' law, where you did not know it left your possession.

These are, believe it or not, often covered under different state laws.

For example, the rule with the first is often if you find something you think someone has accidentally left, you should keep it there, at least for some specified time. If a customer walks out of a restaurant without their purse, the restaurant should hold their purse for them.

Whereas with the second, if you find a wallet in the middle of the sidewalk, or even if you find one in the middle of the hall in the exact same restaurant, you're supposed to turn it in to the police. 'The Place' gets things left behind, where people can go back and get them, the police get things that just fell there, where people possibly have no idea where they are.

Generally. Of course, laws vary by state, but I thought it would be worth mentioning that even truly 'lost' items get treated differently depending on how they got lost.

And neither of those cover deliberately leaving something somewhere on someone else's property. If such a law exists, it's a different law. As far as I know, you don't have any obligation to take care of people's property and make sure they can find their stuff when they do that, like you do when they accidentally give you possession. OTOH, you can't deliberately break their stuff either.

I still think the best bet is to take the thing apart and claim you thought it was part of the car. (Or, rather, plead the fifth and have your lawyer point out they haven't proven you knew it wasn't part of the car.)

OTOH, if you really wanted to screw with the 'lost property' stuff, you put your car inside a giant metal box and hide it in a warehouse somewhere. You have not damaged their tracker at all.

And by them attaching the tracker, they've just admitted that they're recording the location of your car. So there's no way in hell they can force you to reveal the location of your car, because, duh, that's testifying against yourself. (Think about it for a second. If the FBI is collecting 'the location of the car', then 'the location of the car' is clearly being used as evidence in an investigation, presumably against you, so if you're forced to tell them 'the location of the car'...)

Now, a court could demand you turn it over, or be in contempt, but they're actually have to go through the court to do that. And you're still have a pretty interesting argument, namely, that you're not willing to remove something they attached to your car, as you have no experience in that sort of thing and they've threatened to sue you if you damage it .(And you still can't be forced to tell them where the car is.) So, while you'd like for them to get their tracker back, there appears to be no way to actually accomplish that.

Re:Finders Keepers?

[LWATCDR]

Your in college and find a strange device attached to your car.
I don't know about you but I would have taken it apart to see what it was. I would have figured it was some joke a friend had made.
If it wasn't marked as federal property how should I know?

Re:Finders Keepers?

[cmiller173]

1776: "Then it's agreed, gentlemen, in order to secure our rights as a free people, we will risk embarrassment, imprisonment, expropriation, bankruptcy, bodily harm, exile and hanging." 2010: "Of course I'll waive my rights. I don't want to miss my connecting flight."

Re:Finders Keepers?

[Defenestrar]

Especially if you have a family you are taking care of. You have that extra drive to make sure your daughter will grow up in a free country, but that's tempered by the knowledge that certain acts of civil disobedience (or extrapolating to an illegally oppressive government - those may be acts of constitutional obedience) may place you in custody/court for a sufficient amount of time to lose your job. That could result in failure to pay mortgage, inability to obtain another job within your career, etc...

I like to think that my daughter will still think of me as her hero and role model when she grows up, and I know my wife would support me (we'd probably be in trouble together actually) if it were one of the Big freedom issues. So what do you do when it's things like back scatter screening on a field-trip to the courthouse or driving through a DUI checkpoint in the coldest form of sobriety?

This is the insidious danger inherent in the erosion of freedom: not enough to die for, not even enough to make you homeless or hungry or inconvenienced over, but enough, over time, to leave you with a shallow shadow of what our ancestors died for.

Re:Finders Keepers?

[Duradin]

1776: "We lack representation in government and have no other recourse."
2010: "We are the government and have recourse to change laws."

Re:Finders Keepers?

[kurokame]

1776: "The government is across an ocean."
2010: "The government habitually plays big brother (and just did)."

Re:Finders Keepers?

[Derosian]

You must be someone with a huge amount of capital and/or someone who runs a large corporation if you feel you actually have recourse to change laws.

Re:Finders Keepers?

[Belial6]

At the point that the FBI is secretly attaching tracking devices to your car, being 'legally right' is moot. They are already carrying out secret operations against you. Your better bet is to just let as many people know what is going on as possible, so when you disappear, there is some hope that you will be found.

Re:Finders Keepers?

[Americano]

being 'legally right' is moot. They are already carrying out secret operations against you.

I think you mean "They are already carrying out completely legal operations against you, using the legitimate and constitutional authority granted to them by a court of law," right?

You may not LIKE the authority they're given, but as the law stands today, they absolutely have every right to do it, and it *is* legal for them to do it. If you don't LIKE it, you should vote for legislative candidates who will promise to do something about the issue that concerns you. Or, become a candidate yourself, and educate your fellow citizens about the abuses of power you will correct when you're a representative or senator.

Re:Finders Keepers?

[zelbinion]

Better yet, park your car outside a government building and then call the police saying there is a suspicious device attached to your car. Hey, you did the right, thing, right? How can they fault you? You didn't put it there, don't know what it is or what it does, so you called the police. I mean really, the thing looks like a transmitter attached to a pipe bomb, what would you think? The resulting traffic jam and media coverage of shutting down part of town while the city's bomb squad recovers an FBI tracking device (or, possibly blows up your car just to be safe) would be pretty embarrassing for the FBI. Would kinda suck to loose the car though.

OUCH

[ArhcAngel]

When the FBI tells you that you are boring...just WOW!

Re:OUCH

[mrsteveman1]

Yeah... makes me doubt the story... i might be reduce to R'ing TFA.

I did that once, Slashdot was never the same again. Please don't make the same mistake, you have your whole life ahead of you still.

Re:OUCH

[dcollins]

Also: Don't believe it. Call the fucking lawyer.

Re:OUCH

[TheGratefulNet]

grandstanding.

99.9% of us are boring.

so what? people just want to live their lives. terror is over-rated and over-reported.

how much is wasted chasing boogeymen? how many of these chases end up bothing innocent people under a dragnet?

sickening. I hate this aspect of how my country is now acting. its like a child who has not learned from the past and keeps repeating the same 'wolf!' call over and over again.

America

[InsertWittyNameHere]

Land of the free*




* Some conditions apply. See in-country for details. Void where prohibited. No cash value. Offer expires September 11, 2001.

Dont' call your lawyer?

[chad.koehler]

When the FBI tells you "Not to worry" and "Don't call your lawyer", do you want to guess who the very next person you should call is?

Hint:  It's not your mom.

Re:Dont' call your lawyer?

[Mazzie]

Unless your mom is your lawyer... and if that is the case, you have bigger problems than the FBI like having to sign a 12 page lease for the basement, and getting sued for leaving the seat up.

Re:Dont' call your lawyer?

[daid303]

Ghostbusters?

What happens if you destroy it?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you just find one of these and don't realize that it belongs to the FBI, and think "doesn't belong" and destory it (or just toss it in a dumpster), are you liable to pay for it when the FBI comes to get it back?

Re:What happens if you destroy it?

[clone53421]

Take a wild guess.

Re:What happens if you destroy it?

[Grizzley9]

B/C they found the one they wanted him to find...

Re:What happens if you destroy it?

[larry bagina]

The article is a good read and a little creepy. We're here to recover the device you found on your vehicle. It's federal property. It's an expensive piece, and we need it right now...We.re going to make this much more difficult for you if you don't cooperate"

Summary: not illegal/unconstitutional for the government to track your car, probably a crime if you find tracker and do anything with it.

Re:What happens if you destroy it?

[Geek_Cop]

You would hope that they would charge you for it, meaning they will just put an entry into the US Treasury to withhold your next 10 tax returns until the unit is paid for. Otherwise they can simply put you on the "No Fly List" ..that is what they mean by "making it difficult for you". They will simply label you a terrorist or send your name to ICE..the world is their oyster, and you are nothing but a pawn. As a (former) cop, I've watched other cops label innocent people as "Scumbags" and their life was hell in this jurisdiction from then on. A cop just has to "say" you did something to cause you irreparable grief. He doesn't have to prove anything until you go to court. I could only imagine an FBI agent and what his ego could do. Anybody in law enforcement, at every level, is an infantile egomaniac.

Re:What happens if you destroy it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I'd send the device "Next Day UPS Air", addressed to Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan. You know, make it interesting.

Re:What happens if you destroy it?

[clone53421]

Hysterical. You even started with: “If there's one thing I've learned from being a part of large government organizations”.

By your own logic, you told me more about yourself than you did about anyone else working for the government.

Re:What happens if you destroy it?

[JAZ]

Redditors are guessing that it had to do with this post that he made. So slightly more than race, but not by much.

Re:What happens if you destroy it?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

You're kidding, right? Look at this:

Now let's look at how often the Supreme Court decides that the 9th got it wrong. Last term, the Supreme Court's reversal rate for 9th Circuit cases was 90.5 percent. Yikes—that's huge! But wait, for on-the-merits cases, the Supremes reversed the 3rd and 5th Circuits almost all of the time* last term. Cases from state appellate courts fared no better: They also had a 100 percent reversal rate. Overall, this past term the Supreme Court reversed 75.3 percent of the cases they considered on their merits. The pattern holds true for the 2004 and 2005 terms as well, when the Supremes had overall reversal rates of 76.8 percent and 75.6 percent, respectively. For those years, the 9th was reversed 84 percent and 88.9 percent of the time, or about a case or two more each year than it would have been if it had conformed to the reversal rate of the other circuits. How do one or two cases a year add up to a court run amuck?

Re:What happens if you destroy it?

[Obfuscant]

~50,000 students attend that school and none of them are being tracked,

Are you an official spokesman for the FBI who has firsthand knowledge of this as a fact, or are you making this up as you go along?

... except the Arabic one who has no prior criminal history/evidence of wrong doing.

After reading the Wired article, we learn many things:

• His father took the family back to Egypt, but he alone returned.
• He regularly sends money back to people (his brothers) in Egypt.
• His "friend" allegedly posted something about bombs on a website and was known to be under investigation.
• He was contacted by the FBI before for questioning.
• He's on the watch list for flying.
• His lawyer is a member of CAIR. CAIR:
  • "seeks to empower the American Muslim community and encourage its social and political activism.", according to wikipedia.
  • was created by "three officers of the Islamic Association of Palestine" (ibid), and we all know that Palestinians have absolutely no axe to grind with the US.
  • In 1998, Omar Ahmad (a joint founder of CAIR) was reported to have said: "Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth."
• He's going on "a short business trip" to Dubai in a few weeks.

Of course, none of that is illegal, but neither is going to a flight school and asking to taught how to fly. The point being, those who claim he was targeted only because he was half-Egytian or that this is based on profiling aren't looking at the entire picture.

CAIR, in particular, looks a lot like the German-American Bund from pre-WWII days. They claimed to be formed to further German-American relations, but promoted Nazi propaganda and anti-semitism, as well as being a cover for espionage.

The fact he was knowingly driving with expired plates makes him a valid traffic stop by any policeman he goes by.

Re:Wasted opportunity

[Tablizer]

What a wasted opportunity to attach it to a bus.

Or to the chief's car

Not hard to guess why he was being looked at

[Dancindan84]

Not saying it's right, but "Afifi said he often travels for business and has two teenage brothers in Egypt whom he supports financially." Frequent traveling along with sending (presumably) large amounts of cash to the middle-east has to raise some red flags.

Re:Not hard to guess why he was being looked at

[toQDuj]

And? I travel often for business, have family in Indonesia (in-laws), and often send large sums abroad (which is where I live). Does that warrant people investigating me? No. Not everyone with money who travels is suspect.

Re:Not hard to guess why he was being looked at

[Yetihehe]

You are not suspected, but you may want to check your car ;)

Replant the device

[RichMan]

Now that we have pictures we can identify future devices.
When you find one, wander over to a freeway gas station and replant it on an interstate truck. At least make them work to recover it.

Re:Replant the device

[literaldeluxe]

Or drop it off at the police station or mail it to the FBI. An unmarked box containing electronics that sends out transmissions? They'll get the bomb squad to deal with it. Then it ends up on the news, and people will actually hear about it.

Re:Replant the device

[clone53421]

Third, wouldn’t they have seen it coming?

In Soviet America...

[digitaldc]

...hidden GPS device tracks you!

Could have been interesting

[OhHellWithIt]

It would be really interesting to see what would have happened had he disposed of it in a lake before the FBI showed up. There's nothing in the photo to indicate that it belongs to the government; it could have been placed by a private detective. As far as I'm concerned, if you attach something to my car without my permission, it's mine.

Re:Could have been interesting

[hedwards]

Or, better yet, call 911 and report a suspicious device attached to your car. Given what I saw in the picture, that would've been my first step. The device itself isn't easily distinguishable from a bomb. It's clearly got at least 3 of the components necessary, and I personally wouldn't go screwing around with something that has that many components without a robot to do it for me.

Your TomTom is a GPS receiver not a GPS tracker.

[anUnhandledException]

Your TomTom is a GPS receiver not a GPS tracker.

A GPS receiver knows where the GPS receiver is but doesn't have a mechanism to send that information to a remote location.
It doesn't do the FBI any good.

A GPS tracker contains a GPS receiver but also some communication method (cellular, sat, other wireless technology) to periodically or continually send location information to a remote location.

it's okay if the car is/was in your driveway?

[cindyann]

What if it's in the driveway of my fenced, gated (and gate closed) house, possibly with a guard dog or three roaming the premises?

I think if I found someone crawling under my car in my unfenced, ungated driveway, placing some device on my car, I'd be cueing up the track of a shotgun being pumped on my MP3 player, then playing it real loud for the perp under my car.

Friend "wrote something stupid"

[martyros]

If you look further in the article, you can reconstruct a hypothetical scenario which, from the FBI's point of view, looks completely normal:

• Young Arab American named Khaled writes a blog post hinting at something violent: (TFA: "When he later asked Khaled about the post, his friend recalled “writing something stupid,” but said he wasn’t involved in any wrongdoing.")
• FBI gets warrants to track whereabouts of Khalid and his friends, one of whom is Afifi (TFA: "[A former FBI agent] said he was certain that agents who installed it would have obtained a 30-day warrant for its use.")
• FBI plants device on Afifi's car.
• Afifi finds the device during a routine check-up
• FBI notices the thing isn't moving, and/or notice the photos online, and decide to show their cards; especially since they're convinced he's not important anyway.

It's of course a bit scary to have people tracking you when you didn't do anything wrong; and it sounds like there was some annoying bullying (TFA: "[The FBI agent] told Afifi, “We’re going to make this much more difficult for you if you don’t cooperate.”) But it sounds like there's an explanation of how this could have happened by-the-book, and the FBI is doing their job.

Re:Friend "wrote something stupid"

[mdarksbane]

I have no problem with the FBI putting tracking devices on people on whom they are conducting a legitimate investigation. I have a huge problem with the fact that they can do it now on minimum suspicion and without a warrant.

Re:Friend "wrote something stupid"

[SoTerrified]

Just for interests sake, here's the "something stupid" that his buddy Khaled wrote on a 'blog'.

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ciiag/so_if_my_deodorant_could_be_a_bomb_why_are_you/c0sve5q

bombing a mall seems so easy to do. i mean all you really need is a bomb, a regular outfit so you arent the crazy guy in a trench coat trying to blow up a mall and a shopping bag. i mean if terrorism were actually a legitimate threat, think about how many fucking malls would have blown up already.. you can put a bag in a million different places, there would be no way to foresee the next target, and really no way to prevent it unless CTU gets some intel at the last minute in which case every city but LA is fucked...so...yea...now i'm surely bugged : /

If that post gets you FBI monitoring... The FBI has WAYYYY too much time on their hands. But one has to laugh at the irony of the "I'm surely bugged"...

Re:Friend "wrote something stupid"

[GrumblyStuff]

He saw through the security theater and openly questioned it. Pretty dangerous, huh?

And so, the war against common sense and intelligence dutifully continues.

Re:Friend "wrote something stupid"

[Chowderbags]

Oh crap, I've said pretty much that same thing. Maybe I should check my car... oh wait, I'm not brown, the FBI won't care.

Re:Wasted opportunity

[chad.koehler]

Or mail it to Pakistan via Fedex.

Re:GPS in a jam

[Entropius]

A large radio station had a badly-tuned transmitter that jammed the lower half of the FM band in a major city for years, affecting radio reception in the (poor) quarter of the city badly, and making those low-power personal FM transmitters (for use with ipods) useless within 30 miles.

The residents of that neighborhood heard (shitty) gospel music over their land lines, the signal leakage was so bad.

It took the FCC repeated complaints and 10 years to do anything.

Re:Retribution?

[osgeek]

Imagine further if you as a citizen had planted the device on the car of a US Senator. Imagine the trouble you'd be in.

This kind of invasive aggressive action against citizens who have done nothing (no court order) should not be tolerated.

Re:What if he had simply thrown it in the trash?

[js3]

Imagine if an FBI agent shows up to your house and hold you responsible for a missing tracking device you didn't know was on your car.

Not saying I'm ok with it...

[kungfugleek]

..but it wasn't totally out of the blue. FTA:

Six months ago, a former roommate of his was visited by FBI agents who said they wanted to speak with Afifi. Afifi contacted one agent and was told the agency received an anonymous tip from someone saying he might be a threat to national security. Afifi told the agent he was willing to answer questions if his lawyer approved. But after Afifi's lawyer contacted the agency, he never heard from the feds again until he found their tracking device.

Top Ten Things to do with FBI Tracking Devices

[sampas]

10. Place it on your ex-girlfriend's car.
9. Place it on a train.
8. Place it on a freighter carrying electronics to be recycled in China.
7 Place it in your carry-on luggage and watch the fun at airport security.
6. Dial 911 and tell them you've found a bomb on your car. Invite TV news crews to come watch the fun.
5. Give it to your local ACLU and tell them to make the FBI prove it's theirs before handing it back.
4. Pretend you don't know it's there, and drive to as many Tea Party events as possible.
3. Build an autonomous flying drone capable of carrying it and program it to fly around in circles all day.
2. Hack its logic to input arbitrary coordinates and make virtual visits to places you've always wanted to see.
1. Pretend it's not there and go on a tour of the most patriotic American landmarks to demonstrate your loyalty to the United States.

Re:From the article

[mdielmann]

he was planning a short business trip to Dubai in a few weeks... has two teenage brothers in Egypt whom he supports financially. ...

Afifi's father, Aladdin Afifi, was a U.S. citizen and former president of the Muslim Community Association here, before his family moved to Egypt in 2003. Yasir Afifi returned to the U.S. alone in 2008, while his father and brothers stayed in Egypt, to further his education he said. He knows he's on a federal watchlist and is regularly taken aside at airports for secondary screening.

Fits the profile of someone you want to keep an eye on pretty well, actually.

In which case, getting a warrant should be a piece of cake.

Re:Tailing your car?

[Rockoon]

..its different because a cop following you doesnt typically lead to the question "Can we have our cop back now, please?"