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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..
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.
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...)
im fairly sure you dont need a warrant to stake out your nearest dunkin donuts
Actually, the game one puts the responsibility of regulating children INTO the hands of parents and OUT of the government. The ruling just prevented a law requiring the government to decide what can and can't be sold to minors with regards to violent video games. Now the responsibility is on the parents to actually pay attention to what their kids are playing and, if the kids bought something the parents don't want them playing, take it away.
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?
Let's track all our elected officials, too!
Seriously, I am in favor of random drug tests for all elected and appointed Federal officials.
As for this ruling, I expect the Court to go along with any kind of Fourth Amendment violations. They seem to be on the other side nowadays, i.e. against we the people.
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.
>>Seriously, I am in favor of random drug tests for all elected and appointed Federal officials.
Heh, like in Snow Crash, eh? Make the federal government only for the dedicated people willing to work for low pay in order to do something good for the country? Random drug testing and polygraph tests?
Actually? Maybe it wouldn't be so bad.
Well, in any event, it's worth supporting the EFF in their efforts on this. As always, they're on the right side of the issues. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/06/supreme-court-agrees-hear-key-warrantless-gps
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/
Very well said, I couldn't agree more.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
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...
Oh fuck you.
Clarence "Just Bribe My Wife" Thomas's points were as disgustingly intellectually dishonest as I've ever seen from him.
Parental responsibility is just that: PARENTAL. It doesn't mean kids need to have a signed fucking permission slip to go into a store to buy a comic book, bubble gum, or even a video game. It means it is the responsibility of the PARENT to manage what money their kids are given, what they are allowed to do with it, and to punish the kid appropriately when the kid decides to "go behind their parents' backs and..."
If you as a parent don't want your kid to buy a certain game, or a certain action figure, or a toy cap gun, or a certain book, or a magazine, or any one of a gazillion other things that uptight cult-brainwashed puritan moron parents seem to think are "bad" for their kids, then YOU TALK TO YOUR KID ABOUT IT. It is the responsibility of the PARENT to keep tabs on what their kid is doing/buying.
The ruling, rightly stated, points out that it is NOT the right of the parent to demand that every fucking shopkeeper in the state has to be a fucking prick about selling harmless things and checking ID merely because of the 1 in a million chance that the parents of the kid in front of him might be the sort of fucking gap-toothed asshole who insists that the only books in the house be "Da Bible" and the gun cleaning manual hanging next to the rack of roadkill waiting to be gutted and spit-roasted for dinner.
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."
There are many many things in society that seem to be perfectly acceptable when given a direct correlary to "what we have today", but when you sum them all up, you end up with something vaguely resembling 1984.
We need to establish a precident of the expectation of privacy in some way. The argument of "if it could be done by a person, it should be done by a computer" is great in some circumstances, but imagine a national net of sensors, cameras, microphones, etc, that recorded the whereabouts, apparent mood, visual appearance, conversation and any and all associations of every person in the country.
Sure, you could do this, through huge and concerted effort of a team of surveillance experts, which is why it's almost never done.
But what if you could instantly (or constantly) do it to every person, in every public and semi-public space, without any cause at all?
I contend that this is a gross mistreatment and should not be tolerated, but it also fits within your definition of "could be done before with great effort".
Is that sufficient grounds?
Glad to see another /.er ignoring real problems in campaign finance. We just spent $800 Billion on a "jobs program" to fix the countries "infrastructure" and amazingly enough need to spend nearly the same amount on it again because the money wasn't used for that. Where did the $800 Billion go? Federal union employees because they are forced to pay dues and those dues go to the DNC. Yep, thats right, the "stimilus bill" was a money laundering scheme to keep up donations to the DNC on the back of the taxpayers.
Lets also not forget Clinton and Gore selling missile secrets to China and when getting caught actually saying in a presidential national debate "No controlling legal authority" because they told Janet Reno not to prosecute.
Nope, treason and outright theft from the American public is ok by /. standards, but people spending their OWN MONEY on campaigns obviously must be stopped.
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."
Now that minors can go behind their parents' backs and buy the games, parents' role in "taking responsibility for their kids" has become that much more difficult.
What the hell does that matter? Be more concerned about drugs or alchohol, both of which are easier to obtain (no videogame store in the US sell to minors without a parent there, even without the law) and both of which are worse for kids than violent games.
If your kid is getting ahold of a violent game and playing it, you've failed. And it is a minor failure, but that's no one's business but you and your kids. Hands off the law book.
I am no Cliff Huxtable but if I wanted to know what my son was doing, I asked him and he told me. He would admit to stealing, starting a fight and other such actions from the age of four because he knew it was important for me to be able to trust him no matter what. If children are going behind their parents' backs to do anything, the parents haven't been responsible.
Someone's signature here sums your comment up rather nicely, although it is in regards to religion: "Tolerance is to let others live like they want. To appease religious fundamentalists is not tolerance, but submission." Similarly, I think that appeasing the parents who want government to restrict their children for them, is not tolerating their lack of child-rearing experience; it is submitting to their demands. I agree with you, that we should not.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
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.
The government owns the road? What feudal country do you live in? I also really have a hard time believing that if some random person (possibly a stalker, serial killer, burglar, boss) put a tracker on your car you wouldn't feel that your privacy was violated or feel that the appliance added was more than a chalk mark on a part that touches the ground.
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 the burden of cost is one of the ways that our public anonymity is maintained. If the cost barrier is removed, it will need to be erected as a legal barrier.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
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.
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
Soooo...you're saying you are FOR letting a kid run around with $60+ and not having a fucking clue what he/she spent the money on without the government to tell you so? Maybe that whole "need a license to have a kid' idea isn't such a bad thing.
I personally as a parent thought the law was bullshit because I don't need to have the government tell me what my kid can/can't play and actually had NO problem with my boys playing a violent game if they so desired. Of course unlike those that sit their kids in front of a box and walk away I actually interacted with my boys, I know, its a concept, and I sat them down and actually showed them how what they saw on the screen was created. I had no worry that mistake game stupidity for reality because they knew how levels were made, how to edit textures, how scripts create the illusion of AI, etc and you know what? By and large they didn't care about the really violent games because those games had nothing to sell themselves with BUT violence and my boys preferred games with decent level design and good combat to just another blood fest.
Now my oldest is in his second year of pre-med and on the Dean's list, and the youngest is trying to decide whether he wants to go into computer generated art or follow his love of cooking and be a chef. So I think I did just fine without nanny government watching my kids for me, which BTW the movie theaters have NO law that forbids them from letting your kid see an R or NC17 movie, just like the ESRB it is voluntary as it should be.
Know where your kids are, know what they are doing, and spend some time with them. if that is too much to ask then frankly you shouldn't be having kids in the first place. You can't babyproof the world, nor can you have the state raise your kids for you. When my sister ended up trapped in a bed with terminal cancer and I got two babies dropped in my lap I stepped up to the plate and did my damned job. It was hard as hell, I must have spent three years sleeping in a rocking chair so that the youngest could sleep and frankly i'm probably 3 years behind on decent nights rest now. But that is what it takes to be a parent, it takes long hours and hard work. And frankly if you aren't ready for that or can't even honestly say you know what your kid is buying or playing? Maybe it isn't for you.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent national gifts. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.
I agree with the sentiment of your post but when one group tolerates another, they are not equals.
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
Actually, all video game retailers in California are part of the voluntary ratings system that enforces the industry's ratings as if they had the force of law. Manufacturers and distributors make this as a condition in their contracts. Independent tests have found that selling M rated games to children happens less often than allowing children into R rated movies (also a voluntary system).
In practical means, the law was entirely symbolic... except, of course, for the vague usage of the terms in the bill which would have made knowing if one were in violation of the law a complete nightmare.
The ______ Agenda
I'm still betting on "a boot stamping on a human face, forever".
No, but the police will put a gun to your head while they destroy your phone if you take a photo.
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.
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."
Playing Devil's advocate here, since I've been playing violent games since I was 14 without any (noticeable?) side effects.
What the hell does that matter? Be more concerned about drugs or alchohol, both of which are easier to obtain (no videogame store in the US sell to minors without a parent there, even without the law) and both of which are worse for kids than violent games.
But it's still illegal to sell drugs and alcohol to minors. The fact that enforcement is easier in the case of videogames is not really a reason not to make something illegal.
If your kid is getting ahold of a violent game and playing it, you've failed.
Assuming the premise that violent VGs are actually harmful to children, we can all agree that the parent has failed, but that leads to the question: should we allow negligent parents to harm their children (even if by inaction)? Aren't we allowing kids to pay for their parent's mistakes?
Shouldn't we at least make sure the parent actively agrees with the kid playing the VG by buying it him/herself, instead of allowing unsupervised children of negligent parents run rampant?
Dilbert RSS feed
But if the parents haven't in fact been responsible, it's the children who pays for such negligence, no?
(Assuming that violent VGs are actually harmful.)
Dilbert RSS feed
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.
but people spending their OWN MONEY on campaigns obviously must be stopped
The CEO can spend all of his OWN MONEY on any campaign that he wants to. It's not HIS OWN money until his company cuts him a check.
As distasteful as the effects of the decision are, they are in keeping with the constitution. The government can no more take speech away from someone as they can give extra speech to someone else. The citizens' solution is to support candidates with cash, not to use the government to force people to pay for someone else's speech. Another solution would be to remove the FCC rule that requires media outlets to charge the lowest published rate to political candidates.
As for the not speaking to minors thing, it is silly. But often, justices will place "oddball" opinions into dissents just to get them on record. That was also a correct decision; more harm is done by restricting minors' rights than by allowing them to buy nudie magazines and vid-ja games.
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.
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."
One good test of this is whether the police would have any issue with the public doing the same to them in return - in this case hiding GPS trackers on cop cars to make sure they don't engage in waste/fraud/abuse of public resources by hanging out a little too long at the donut shop, or putting personal miles on squad cars, or speeding when they aren't actually responding to a call.
Anybody want to try it?
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.
If only Lulzsec didn't disband!
I have reasonable suspicion of you not being a worshipper of the one true God. Please calmly go to sleep tonight soon after which a tiny unnoticeable RFID tag will be inserted just under the skin of your right hand. It will only activate when you attempt to buy or sell anything, communicating with similar RFID chips in banknotes or credit cards belonging to banks covered by the FDIC
After all, the government owns those instruments of commerce
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.
1) The whole purpose of the GPS, or physically following, is to see what private property lines they cross. You think the Officers would place a GPS on your vehicle so they could see the roads you traveled?
2) Sure they could tail the person but in order to do so they would have to give the folks upstairs a valid reason for expending the man hours the same as they'd have to show a judge for a warrant. That is why they went the GPS route since its cheap and they're few Supervisors are going to put them back on the beat for wasting a $25 tracker!
3) You seem to forget that that it was Taxpayer money that pays for the Highways and the Taxpayers own them! Oh and that same Government has to follow that pesky Constitution.
4) Any time the Government gathers information on an Individual it is a search.
It is not as if SCOTUS decisions are a suggestion. They are binding case law.
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.
The problem with this has been pointed out before in similar discussions. If the police can do this sort of warrantless GPS tracking, it becomes easy for a police officer to stalk an ex-girlfriend/ex-boyfriend. Without GPS, a police officer can choose to tail someone for bad reasons, but sooner or later, their supervisor is likely to question the time they are spending doing so. On the other hand, GPS tracking devices are relatively cheap and it is likely that their supervisor might never realize that they had used one inappropriately. Additionally, it gives the police the power to track those who are in political opposition to current office holders.
What good does it do me if the GPS evidence from when I travel onto private property being inadmissable in court if the reason that the police are tracking me is to find out whether or not I associate with people in disfavor with the powers that be? The purpose of the 4th Ammendment is not to make it harder for the authorities to find out if you are committing a crime. The purpose of the 4th Ammendment is to make it harder for the authorities to find out if you are supporting an opposition political movement.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Expectation of privacy should be simply what the common man reasonably expects to be true, not what extreme or unusual circumstances make possible. When I was younger, I'd often go on long trips late at night. I'd be the ONLY person on the road for miles. Being a law abiding citizen, I think it's REASONABLE to EXPECT that the appearance of being all alone on the road at 3am meant that no one knew I was there, aside from people I told where I was going. I was aware there could be a state trooper lurking in the dark watching for speeders. We all know that happens, and no one will claim they expected not to find state troopers on highways.
Putting a tracking device on someone's car is radically different. I DO expect that when I go out my door in the morning and drive to work (or wherever), that there isn't anyone watching my every move. I DO believe I have the right and expectation to go about my business without being tracked since I'm not engaged in any illegal conduct.
Your point that tracking via a GPS device isn't functionally different than physically tracking someone is true, but it lowers the bar to the point where misuse is likely. It's really no different than saying wiretapping someone's cell phone without a warrant should be allowed as long as whatever is heard when the person is not in public is inadmissable. After all, you could simply overhear the same content as long as you had an officer tail the person and stay within listening distance.
The bottom line is that the technology has changed, and we as a society need to decide what checks and balances we want to put in place to both allow law enforcement to be effective and protect the rights of citizens. Banning GPS tracking altogether seems inappropriate. Letting police slap one on anybody they want seems inappropriate. "Get a warrant" seems just right.
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 guess I don't look at video games as "speech" at all. I look at video games as a toy, as they're interactive. Does the mechanical demonic cymbal-clapping monkey count as speech because it makes a noise?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
No one wants to ban the cymbal-clapping monkey. People want to ban video games because of the ideas and messages they teach children. They don't want there kids to learn violence is ok from a game. That communication is speach. If games couldn't teach violence and sex is ok then no one would care. Chances are if you want to ban something. It is either dangerously deffective or contains speach you don't like.
Dude, you have my highest respect, bar none.
In Snow Crash all government employees, not just those elected and appointed, had to be tested IIRC.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I hope this serves as a lesson that laws shouldn't rely on the burden of cost, work, or practicality, because those fade quickly.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
If you want to crack someone's WPA2 there are cheaper and easier ways. Just drop a device with specs similar to an off-the-shelf pda-phone (or put one in a weatherproof housing with a big battery pack) in someone's garden with the instructions to crack a certain SSID (you can even bury it with a "grass blade" antenna like they use for the seismic sensors around Area 51). When it finishes it can send you the key in a text, or connect to the network and open a reverse SSH tunnel to a VPN server for you if you're attacking someone who wouldn't notice.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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.
In your dreams. To quote Antonin Scalia:
JUSTICE THOMAS ignores the holding of Erznoznik, and denies that persons under 18 have any constitutional right to speak or be spoken to without their parents’ consent. He cites no case, state or federal, supporting this view, and to our knowledge there is none. Most of his dissent is devoted to the proposition that parents have traditionally had the power to control what their children hear and say. This is true enough. And it perhaps follows from this that the state has the power to enforce parental prohibitions—to require, for example, that the promoters of a rock concert exclude those minors whose parents have advised the promoters that their children are forbidden to attend. But it does not follow that the state has the power to prevent children from hearing or saying anything without their parents’ prior consent. The latter would mean, for example, that it could be made criminal to admit persons under 18 to a political rally without their parents’ prior written consent—even a political rally in support of laws against corporal punishment of children, or laws in favor of greater rights for minors. And what is good for First Amendment rights of speech must be good for First Amendment rights of religion as well: It could be made crimi- nal to admit a person under 18 to church, or to give a person under 18 a religious tract, without his parents’ prior consent. Our point is not, as JUSTICE THOMAS believes, post, at 16, n. 2, merely that such laws are “undesirable.” They are obviously an infringement upon the religious freedom of young people and those who wish to proselytize young people. Such laws do not enforce parental authority over children’s speech and religion; they impose governmental authority, subject only to a parental veto. In the absence of any precedent for state control, uninvited by the parents, over a child’s speech and religion (JUSTICE THOMAS cites none), and in the absence of any justification for such control that would satisfy strict scrutiny, those laws must be unconstitutional. This argument is not, as JUSTICE THOMAS asserts, “circular,” ibid. It is the absence of any historical warrant or compelling justification for such restrictions, not our ipse dixit, that renders them invalid.
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.
Punishment of the innocent in order to catch the guilty is a poor way to design a law. Not that this sort of thing doesn't happen, ooh, almost everywhere else (*AA-sponsored laws, I'm lookin' at you!). Just sayin'.
They are attaching devices to private property they don't own without a warrant or any kind of oversight. How would you like it if the police attached a wireless contact mic to your front window so they could hear everything that was said in the house? Using your argument, there's no reasonable expectation of privacy in your own home since anyone can stand there and put their ear up against your window. They have to attach a device to your car to track you. They have to attach a device to your front window to hear you. It's _exactly_ the same.
So you want some fed in a white fan beating his meat to the sound of your daughter masturbating without a warrant? You want them monitoring if you go to the tittie bar? The government should not be allowed to snoop at all without a warrant. There should be no gray, it needs to be black and white.
That's what this is leading to, erosion of protection from the government snooping on it's own citizens with no good reason. If they have a good reason they can get a warrant. If they can't then there is no good reason to snoop.
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
This is the scary part. I unfortunately agree my friend.
If the parents have been *that* irresponsible, it's unlikely that a few hours' of GTA is going to cause the kid any more harm.
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.
Dude, if your kids are going behind your back without the law, they could go behind your back with it.
My window isn't sitting on public property. My car does nearly nothing BUT travel on public roads.
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.
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.
Thank you, but I never thought what I did was that big a deal honestly. How could someone look down at two innocent little faces, the oldest not even 2 and the youngest barely 6 months old, and not step up?
Sadly their father could, as he got one taste of meth on a construction job he was working and has spent the rest of his life chasing highs instead of even knowing where his kids were. When my sister died a lousy $200 from me was all it took to get him to sign away his rights without a second thought. Last I heard he is back in jail for getting high and beating up an ATM and he has gotten Hep C on top of it. I figure in another year or two they'll find him in a ditch somewhere. The oldest just shakes his head and looks at him with pity, the youngest doesn't give a shit if he lives or dies, even though I tried to keep them from becoming estranged knowing my sis wasn't gonna be here for long. I did think it was nice that last Father's day I got a card and a pizza, when I said I wasn't a dad they said "close enough for us, and a hell of a better one than our real dad".
So I just did what I thought any decent human being would do when faced with two young boys with no parents, I busted my ass and did everything I could to give them as much of a normal life as I could with their mother slowly dying in the next room. I got lucky though as in the final stage I met a truly wonderful woman who didn't give a shit that the boys weren't mine or that the youngest was gay, who took time off work to stay with us during the funeral and give the boys a shoulder to cry on. She has become the mother that my sister always wanted to be and if she wasn't gun shy from two abusive exs I would have already put a ring on her finger. In the end you do what you have to, give it 110%, and if your heart is in the right place it will all work out in the end.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
It's a lesson that our sadly flawed founding fathers so desperately needed to learn. (Is that blasphemy to say on July 4th?) Not that they did a bad job, but clearly there's room for improvement. Another 10 or 20 amendments - or just better wording on some of the existing ones - might have saved us all a hell of a lot of trouble.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.