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Supreme Court To Weigh In On Warrantless GPS Tracking
CWmike writes "In a move with far-reaching privacy implications, the U.S. Supreme Court has decided to hear a case involving the government's authority to conduct prolonged GPS tracking of suspects in criminal cases without first obtaining a court warrant. The government has argued that it has the authority to conduct such searches; privacy advocates have argued that such tracking violates Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure. The Supreme Court's decision in the case will be pivotal because lesser courts around the U.S. have appeared split on the issue in recent years, with some upholding warrantless GPS tracking and others rejecting it. Last August, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia circuit sided with the subject of the Supreme Court hearing, Antoine Jones, a Washington, D.C. man who was convicted in 2008 on charges of possessing and conspiring to distribute more than 50 kilograms of cocaine, and rejected claims by the government that federal agents have the right to conduct around-the-clock warrantless GPS tracking of suspects."
Ten dollars says that they support the government in by at least 7 members. mmm I wonder if my bookie is taking bets on this..
I expect it'll probably go opposite the way I would want to see the ruling go, just given the recent history.
Arizona's Clean Elections law got stomped on despite creating more speech in giving out more money.
Minors can buy violent video games, even though historically Minors haven't had full rights and parents are the ones who have had the authority to regulate their children.
So, I expect this one to disappoint me too, in that I don't think that warrantless GPS monitoring should generally be legal.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
If it were up to this court the government would be able to quarter troops in our homes. It's no question how it will rule when it comes to what protections the Fourth Amendment provides (none at all). That it is hearing this case is bad news by itself.
If it's not violating our rights, then it certainly isn't violating their rights .. now is it?
Getting a warrant is too damn hard!
Yeah, not going to buy that excuse, not with the number of no-knock search warrants issued every day with no probable cause. Its pretty bad the people we want to protect our rights are fighting to remove them. What's next, my Doctor giving me a prescription for dorritos and beer?!
Is their reasons behind the outcome.
I mean, they do have to understand that if they allow the government to do this, it basically cuts out the Judiciary branch in regards to oversight. They could spy on ANYONE at ALL TIMES without a single warrant being filed. It also means that the FBI could start attaching these devices to THEIR cars.
(Of course there is no reason why the FBI would want to track judges now is there...)
if they won't even follow the most basic law we have: the Constitution.
They expect us to obey every dipshit law that they pass on whatever whim they have on that particular day, but God forbid that they have to get a [gasp] warrant to conduct a search or track somebody.
Some states want to tax using driving habits based upon GPS. What would this mean for states' or feds' attempts to require GPS in all motor vehicles?
I hear it is pretty accurate now and very easy to do.
Let's see, if they pass the bill, theyll surely circumvent it somehow anyway. Or, they could try to pass yet another bill that enables them to monitor your web traffic. Html 5 integrated with gps is perfectly fine for the gov, or those pics on your phone you take not realizing the gps metadata is built into every one of them. (minus the people who care enough to cleanse it of course.) But they'd need a reason to want your information... Unless they had it already, waiting on it, knowing what they could do with their power if they so cared to detain you... But that would imply you didn't take the precautions to protect your data.. So how hard is it to get a warrant, not too hard.. They dont even need one anymore. Let the internet be open-source indeed.
As a Canadian nursed on a meager diet of Canadian TV content and a mess of pablum for the brainless USA TV content, I've always had an "if you wish upon a star", kinda of a hope for you all, but when the FBI starts dealing down with organized crime and there's no privacy or protection from racketeering Corporations running wild with patents and copyrights rather than just clubs and guns, I gotta say you're just fucked, deeply, badly fucked.
I know this is an unpopular view here, but I don't have any problem with it, as long as your whearabouts once your vehicle crosses a private property line is inadmissible. The cops can already get this information by dangerously and expensively tailing you or flying over your head, and they can do that without a warrant; why should obtaining the same information from a GPS be any different? I just don't see how your whereabouts of your vehicle on public roads creates any expectation of privacy.
To the argument that the GPS device is a modification to your property: I don't see how it's any more of a modification than the meter maid putting a chalk mark on your tires.
There should be reasonable suspicion, to be sure (just about any law enforcement activity requires it), but I don't think a GPS tracker crosses the line into needing probable cause and a warrant. Tracking your location on public roads is neither search nor seizure. The govt. built and owns the road; if you don't like it, don't drive.
Kyllo held that the use of a thermal imaging device from a public vantage point to monitor the radiation of heat from a person's home was a "search" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, and thus required a warrant. Because the police in this case did not have a warrant, the Court reversed Kyllo's conviction for growing marijuana.
Majority: Scalia, joined by Souter, Thomas, Ginsburg, Breyer
Dissent: Stevens, joined by Rehnquist, O'Connor, Kennedy
Kyllo was a win for us, but you can bet Sotamayor and Kagan will follow Stevens lead, and Roberts and Alito will follow Rehnquist/Connor. We get the worst of both the "liberal" and "conservative" Justices.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyllo_v._United_States
No Inflation Taxation without Representation
Is this even relevant, given that private companies would likely be more than willing to sell your location information to the police or anyone else?
Are the police barred, for instance, from purchasing your location information from companies that perform automated license plate tracking? What about 5 years from now when every department has an 'eye in the sky' providing the ability to track you visually from the air?
http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
They argue that they can track any vehicle that is out in the public, so why not require them to set up a website that reports their whereabouts by the minute? Wonder if they'd change their minds...
It's about fucking time.
If it were up to this court the government would be able to quarter troops in our homes.
You should be HONORED to have one of our brave troops set foot in your home, you dope-smoking Liberal. If it wasn't for our troops, you wouldn't have a home, you Sharia-loving socialist! You should take a trip down to the local VA hospital to get a close look at the blood and limbs that have been lost to save your freedom. My wife and I moved into the garage so the fine young hero in our care could sleep in a decent bed after the rock mattresses he got in Afghanistan.
Sure, they were good enough to fight for you in Iraq, but now you think our troops should be homeless. You make me sick, you Jon Stewart acolyte.
[I defy you to work through Poe's Law on this one. :-) ]
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
If it's not an unreasonable search to attach a tracker to someones car, does that mean ordinary citizens can do it too?
Is not whether this tracking is constitutional: it's an obvious violation of the fourth amendment, among other civil rights. The question is whether the court will do its duty, or once again provide a pretense of legitimacy to a power-grab.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Decaff, bro.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
SuperDave80 could have made his argument with a little more rigor, but what's he reaching for is "Not even the King is above the Law."
The Government cannot expect us to follow the Law if it will not follow the Law itself. This was the whole point of the Magna Carta, one of the founding documents of modern law.
The 1215 Charter required King John of England to proclaim certain liberties, and accept that his will was not arbitrary, for example by explicitly accepting that no "freeman" (in the sense of non-serf) could be punished except through the law of the land, a right which is still in existence today.
If the Rule of Law does not apply to all, including and especially the Executive, then you have the walking definition of a corrupt state and an illegitimate government. When the government does not obey the law, you have a duty to break it and oppose the men in power. I'll let the Declaration of Independence speak for itself:
...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends ... it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
When the government does not follow the Law, then there is no Law to be followed.
You will, of course, still have moral limits on your behavior.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
The first question that needs to be answers is why there might be a case where getting a warrant is a problem when they are willing to expend the resources to attach the tracking device in the first place. These things are expensive - on the order of $1000 plus fees for the cell phone connection. So they can't attach one just on a whim, there has to be some reason. So what reasons would there be where a warrant would be a problem? I would guess that the most logical would be one where someone is clearly involved in the drug trade but not carrying actionable amounts of any controlled substance. It is hard to get a warrant on a "conspiracy" charge and nothing more to go on that a good guess. Think "mob accountant" also for an example of this.
I could also see situations where it is next to impossible to charge a person with a crime for stuff they are clearly doing so what is needed is finding something else they are doing that is actionable. One example would be someone making child porn videos but neither the parents who are getting well paid nor the children themselves will file a complaint. The question then becomes what else is this person doing, can we catch them in the act, etc.
So now we have relatively high-profile cases that more information is needed about but that information isn't forthcoming. Sure, you could assign 2 people on three shifts to follow the person but that is going to get expensive fast. It also presupposes that the manpower is available and today in law enforcement it simply is not available - there are no "extra" six people. So some kind of tracking that doesn't require humans doing the tracking is needed. The "new law enforcement" is operating with fewer and fewer bodies and more and more technology. Not only is policing an unpopular job these days but at nearly every level the budget just keeps getting cut back further and further. Remember when two-person patrol cars where the norm? Most police cars today have a laptop bracket blocking the passenger seat making two-person patrols impossible. The manpower simply doesn't exist any longer.
Push hard enough against GPS tracking and we will have optical systems using either LEO satellites (lots of 'em) or solar-powered drones. The LEO satellites would be tough to coordinate and we might not have all the kinks worked out of that right now. The drones are clearly less than five years away and might be nearly as cost effective as GPS tracking is today.
Today a GPS tracker with a cell phone is pretty easy to find. A optical tracking drone flying around at 10,000 feet is impossible to find. The motivation is clearly present, so be careful what you wish for. If GPS isn't an option then something else will be used and it will likely be more intrusive and less detectable.
Any chance Alito will break his record of never seeing a police search he didn't like? Nah....
The cops can already get this information by dangerously and expensively tailing you or flying over your head, and they can do that without a warrant; why should obtaining the same information from a GPS be any different?
Because Liberty is a matter of degree, not just type. A woman runs into her ex-boyfriend at Starbucks Monday morning. If she doesn't see him again, that's chance. If she bumps into him again at lunch, that's odd. If she sees him at dinner, it's weird. If she sees him every time she sets foot out her door, that's stalking.
Police departments have finite resources. They can only surveil a handful of people full-time. That's police work. If they can automate that and keep track of thousands of people simultaneously while logging their every movement into a database, that's Orwellian.
The fact that they would do that while trespassing on my property is just creepy.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
How do we even GET to the 4th amendment when in order to even place a device on your car someone has to at minimum infringe on your property rights and often trespass to do so. The argument shouldnt be is this a legal search..it should be who the hell are you to put your device on MY property and often in MY driveway.
Yeah, I thought about that, but the people who sound off like this usually want to be the ones doing the comforting, see Larry Craig.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Or study under Asimov's psychohistory.
We're seriously on a path to *someting*. I keep hoping it's a Privacy Rebellion rather than the Mayan's End of the World in Dec2012 (your month here.)
I just suk as a psychic so I can only read tier 3 trends.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
What does it take to kick off a Supreme justice?
By not answering to anyone a justice can go on a rampage.
With the Repub/Conserv leaning court we could damage civil rights for decades.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I'm still betting on "a boot stamping on a human face, forever".
If the feds don't bother getting a warrant, then they don't get to whine if their "suspect" decides to dispose of the device as he sees fit.
Bend over and cough, because we are all now at the mercy of a justice system loyal to guilt first, innocence last.
Smoke this! It's the law!
Wow, sorry man, started taking myself just a little too seriously there for a second...
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
If the Supremes rule against this does that mean my routine GPS tracking of my estranged ex-GF will become illegal?
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Death, resignation, or impeachment which follows the same process as impeaching a president. Such an impeachment requires evidence of actual crimes committed, not simply a disagreement in ideologies.
Does violating their oath of office count?
I'm going to go ahead and guess that they know a little more about the Constitution than you do, and may be aware of subtleties of its interpretation that cloud the issue.
And yet, the wonderful thing is that BeanThere still has the right to call them on their nonsense. You just made the most literal "Appeal to Authority" argument I've ever heard. I'll go BeanThere one better. Not only do I believe their decisions of late have been grievously, horrifically wrong, I don't think they're the caliber of men fit to walk through the Court's doors and sit in the shadow of Thurgood Marshall, Earl Warren and Oliver Wendell Holmes.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
From the constitution:
This is really aimed at government officials that commit crimes. If you are asking if judges can be removed from office because their rulings don't "support this Constitution" the answer is probably no. A judge has discretion to interpret the constitution. If congress disagrees with that interpretation they can amend the constitution.
Suppose the constitution is amended, a case with the exact same circumstances comes before the judge and he rules the same way regardless of the amendment. That is an issue that has not come up...
Stalking as a degree got defined by law at the cost of blood. We literally stacked up too many bodies of women until it could no longer be ignored. It wasn't a natural consequence.
Speaking of the law, here's what Warren and Brandeis thought of technological surveillance:
The Right to Privacy
Warren and Brandeis, Harvard Law Review, December 15, 1890
Recent inventions and business methods call attention to the next step which must be taken for the protection of the person, and for securing to the individual what Judge Cooley calls the right "to be let alone" [10] Instantaneous photographs and newspaper enterprise have invaded the sacred precincts of private and domestic life; and numerous mechanical devices threaten to make good the prediction that "what is whispered in the closet shall be proclaimed from the house-tops."
Warren and Brandeis were worried about technologial advances destroying privacy in 1890. Just how big of a heart attack do you think they'd have at the idea of the police warrantlessly tracking citizens 24/7?
And how far do you think our liberties have slipped?
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
In the words of one of your commentators stand up for yourself poindexter!
The warrant less GPS tracking of American civilians for the purpose of prosecution is akin to having all of you tagged like pets with impunity.
The problem with America is that there is always some bible thumping, fence sitting, fox news die hard who says: " I'm not worried because I didn't do anything wrong, let them do whatever they want"! Governments LOVE people like this and promote these values for one reason alone: TO KEEP YOU DOWN AND OUT OF THE WAY!
Sure let them do whatever they want and you will see how much they care about your freedom or your property or even your life as you keep submitting like domesticated babies.
Sure they (the gov) can send out the "black helicopters", chase you and stalk you with their cruisers and undercover agents, all without a warrant but have any of you spineless people ever considered the reason WHY they are so forceful in denying you the right of privacy?
Because like all governments they fear YOU en masse. For the GED crowd that means they fear ALL of you in a large group thinking for yourselves.
The only reason government mildly tolerates the law (and your wonderful ACLU) is that it cannot risk being seen as oppressive in an obvious manner.
For a government to be seen in any other manner than mildly controlling would cause the majority of the feeble minded and week kneed people to question their rule and as such threaten their power.
Remember that a government exists and strives to continue on for one reason: to STAY in power.
So many of you say Obama was supposed to be your savior! He's leading the appeal in this case to remove what little rights you have left like all of your previous administrations!
As with any plan with an intelligent design, you all will wake up one day to find you cannot move, work, or speak freely, should your apathy continue with regard to your civil rights.
You can't even control your own government and what it does to you, how do you people expect your nation to be seen as the "leader of the free world" when you are all on a ship of fools?
You are all either pathetically indifferent or too stupid to see how quickly you give away your hard earned civil liberties.
with GPS trackers how many years would they put me in prison?
If I can't do it to them as a regular citizen, then they need a warrant to do the same back to me.
The government is going to argue in public people have no expectation of privacy whatsoever; you can be followed, video and audio recorded, and a team of monkeys can surveil you from afar around the clock . Thus hooking a GPS to your car without your knowledge is just an extension of a permitted activity.
I should hope the judges, and especially the police, comprehend a positive judgment for the government in this case also means that hooking a GPS to a cops, judge's, congressman's or clerks personal car and tracking it is [i]perfectly legal[/i] for "domestic terrorists" and "unregistered journalists". It also opens up an entire can of worms; if someone's wifi router is broadcasting signal into the public....there are fairly inexpensive ways to crack WPA2 if you have the cash and can run a few wires in a car. I mean if I can broadcast signal from your car by placing a device on your personal property...
The sane and rational government would make the determination that tampering with someone's vehicle in any way is littering and vandalism, especially if someone decides to get fancy and screw or glue the darned thing into the frame. You are placing something on my personal property without my permission and believe you me if the police ever did that, I would gather fingerprints and fight for a search warrant to press criminal charges in such a case.
It is not as if SCOTUS decisions are a suggestion. They are binding case law.
Only possible conclusion: It never was your property in the first place. Yes, I'm dead serious.
Logically, the key prerequsite for ownership of property is absolute control over that property. If you don't have absolute control, then how can it be your property?
A judge has discretion to interpret the constitution. If congress disagrees with that interpretation they can amend the constitution.
Huh? Amending the constitution isn't necessary for that. Either something is constitutional or it isn't. The supreme court can't decide that for themselves (all they can do is interpret it, as you said, which does not involve altering its meaning). They can say something is constitutional (or that it isn't), but that does not mean that they are right.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
IIRC, supreme court justices are open to charges of "high crimes and misdemeanors" which has whatever meaning the US Congress assigns to it should it decide to have a trial.
Should a supreme court justice be tried for impeachment, they are tried in the Senate. As there is no mechanism for appeal, this means that it is the US Congress that decides what constitutes an impeachable offense for a sitting supreme court justice.
While it's unlikely that the US Senate would vote to impeach a justice on ideological grounds, it's not outside the realm of possibility.
With the Supreme Court being the highest law of the land, their judgment as to whether a law is constitutional or not is effectively the last word on whether or not it is constitutional.
Moreover, I think you are unclear on the limits of language. The issues of inherent meaning and interpretation are so intertwined that it is next to impossible to separate them in a useful and meaningful fashion.
Precisely what I came here to say. If I find a tracking device on my car I'm going to attach it to something headed to NY. Preferably a train.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm pretty certain they're going to okay warrant-less GPS tracking.
The SC picks cases where the facts fit nicely into the decision they want to give. Trying to sell 50 kg of cocaine is a pretty damning, though unrelated, fact. That strongly suggests they'll come down on the side of "law enforcement."
Not to mention the SC's recent rubber stamping of whatever the government wants to do to prosecute "bad guys."
It's going to be awhile yet before the supreme court's pendulum swings the other way...
1. 2.
So is putting your police boot on the back of a crack addict's neck and shooting him with a glock to fix his addiction problem.
So is stopping a car chase by shooting the suspect's car with one of these http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5Ev19NsDQ4 (m134)
So is being able to strip/cavity search every single person walking down the street to find people holding contraband. They're on public property right? Their pants are baggy so they must be doing something wrong.
There are many more ways to make law enforcement more effective. Why don't we just take everyone's rights away right now, use the most heavy handed tactics possible and have crime-free society?
Oh that's right, it won't work. Criminals will still do what they do and the collateral damage isn't worth it.
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
Poe's Law
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
That's the first time I've ever made an unpopular (yet coherent) comment, gotten 15 replies, and yet been modded down. That's some quality moderating there.
Usually the bodies get stacked in drawers in the morgue.
Here let me Google That For You: Stalking Victims
Get a cup of cocoa, a blankie and a comfortable chair, because you'll be reading a while.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Got new for you, /every/ understanding of what the US Constitution means is an /interpretation/ of what the US constitution means.
That some sections are more likely to find a consensus of interpretations in no way makes them less interpretted.
Because the new laws have transformed nearly everyone into a criminal it might be cheaper and easier to track the innocent..
Because HOMELAND HS SECURITY claims everyone is guilty until proven innocent, courts should be organized to
convict the innocent.
Since only crooked corrupt persons get elected to political office, election might stand to prove a conviction?
Some interpretations are wrong, and obviously so, according to some other interpretations.
Take the claim that the meaning of "freedom of speech" having a clear and univocal meaning with no room for interpretation. Does that mean that we are free to slander someone, to shout 'fire' in a crowded movie theater when there is no evidence of such, to use words judged as obscene by one's local community, to use "fighting words" when speaking to others? Those uses of language are sometimes counted as falling under "freedom of speech" and sometimes not.
As for definitions of words not changing, consider the use of the 'gay' 100 years ago compared to today. For that matter, consider the way a libertarian uses the word 'freedom' compared to a neoplatonist. Or consider the use of the word 'happiness' in the Declaration of Independence. The "pursuit of happiness" did not mean to the intelligentsia of the 18th century what it means to most people today. Language is not static. Consider what it means to be a conservative in formerly Soviet regions of the world compared to what it means to be a conservative in the US.
In other words, definitions follow usage. And usage is determined by a whole host of factors that include culture, history, tradition, rule following, and more. These factors change over time. Sometimes they change slowly. Sometimes they change quickly.
Interesting read. It just seems like such an infringement of privacy...but we'll see what the Court decides.
L
http://www.meridianworkingcapital.com/