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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."
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.
im fairly sure you dont need a warrant to stake out your nearest dunkin donuts
Yep. What sucks is that they are taking a case where the defendant is clearly someone that the government should have been tracking and just didn't go through the correct channels of authorization (warrants). For the supreme court to decide to hear this case makes me think that they want to look like the good guys when they decide that the government can track anyone for any reason at any time.
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
Successfully reading the court in advance requires a degree in divining, Harry Potter style. It could be just the opposite -- they want to make the point that it would have been easy to get a warrant, so forbidding warrantless tracking won't actually hurt the state's interest in catching criminals.
"What sucks is that they are taking a case where the defendant is clearly someone that the government should have been tracking and just didn't go through the correct channels of authorization (warrants)."
Do we actually know that? Did they already have probable cause? If they did, why didn't they use it?
I think it's much more likely that they felt they "knew" what he was up to, and were on a fishing expedition to try to get some real evidence. But fishing expeditions are illegal; that's the point.
The problem with just letting them do this to somebody they "know" (or think) is guilty, is that surprisingly often, people "know" things that just aren't so. Further, as the Supreme Court has ruled in the past, fishing expeditions are not permissible because, among other reasons, "evidence" might be found that makes even innocent people appear guilty. Just like the guy who was picked up for arson because his local store's "club card" information said he had bought a fire starter. Later, the real guilty party confessed to the crime. The other guy just wanted to light his barbecue.
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.
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."
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 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.
The Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States are tenured; they don't care if they look like 'the good guys' or not. They don't have to compete with anyone else to keep their jobs for the rest of their useful lives, so there's simply no impetus to keep other people happy.
This is a good thing: It is, perhaps, the least political position of power in the justice system.
I look forward to seeing what they have to say about this case.
Kid-proof tablet..
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.
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?
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It's tricky to remember the 800 number to call when you want a rubber stamped warrant.
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.
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.
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...
The Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States are tenured; they don't care if they look like 'the good guys' or not. They don't have to compete with anyone else to keep their jobs for the rest of their useful lives, so there's simply no impetus to keep other people happy.
That you know of.
The way a couple of the judges toe the party line, even when it goes against previously spoken convictions, leads me to consider that the party that nominated them may have something on them - perhaps something in their past that they don't want to become public. A controllable SCOTUS judge or two wouldn't be unthinkable - the politicos and powerful lobbyists have done far worse than that in the past.
If there's a need for warrantless investigations of individual US citizens, I think we should start by wiretapping the Supreme Court to find out whether they discuss cases with politicians or former fundraisers, or otherwise take "suggestions" from the outside.
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."
Is it too late to get Amazon to do express delivery of nine copies of the book 1984 to:
Supreme Court of the United States
One First Street N.E.
Washington, DC 20543
Just saying. Every single thing in that book can easily be argued to be "a simple extension of police tracking that is enabled through the use of new technology". At some point, you have to draw a line.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
"But it would not be illegal for an undercover officer to follow him around, the police doesn't need probable cause for that. At least I've never heard of the police being charged with stalking and given a restraining order..."
But, as his defense attorney has already pointed out, that is different. Even a dedicated human "tail" is not likely to be following him 24 hours a day, everywhere he goes. There are some definite differences there.
It also involves tampering with private property, to attach and detach the device.
What it boils down to, is that this is somewhere between human surveillance, as you compared it to, and putting a radio collar on you to track your every movement. I think it is pretty obvious that a radio collar would come under the purview of the 4th Amendment.
And if you ask my honest opinion, that situation resembles a radio collar a hell of a lot more than it does human surveillance.
I almost forgot an important point:
Unlike human surveillance, which is generally used to watch for the commission of a particular crime, a GPS tracker can actually give the police all kinds of private information about you that is not in any way connected with a crime, and which they have no business knowing. Remember that crime suspects don't lose all their rights just because they are suspects, nor should they.