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Two New Fed GPS Trackers Found On SUV
jcombel writes with this excerpt:
"As the Supreme Court gets ready to hear oral arguments in a case Tuesday that could determine if authorities can track U.S. citizens with GPS vehicle trackers without a warrant, a young man in California has come forward to Wired to reveal that he found not one but two different devices on his vehicle recently. The 25-year-old resident of San Jose, California, says he found the first one about three weeks ago on his Volvo SUV while visiting his mother in Modesto, about 80 miles northeast of San Jose. After contacting Wired and allowing a photographer to snap pictures of the device, it was swapped out and replaced with a second tracking device. A witness also reported seeing a strange man looking beneath the vehicle of the young man’s girlfriend while her car was parked at work, suggesting that a tracking device may have been retrieved from her car. Then things got really weird when police showed up during a Wired interview with the man."
When this reporter drove down to meet Greg and photograph the second tracker with photographer Snyder, three police cars appeared at the location that had been pre-arranged with Greg, at various points driving directly behind me without making any verbal contact before leaving.
After moving the photo shoot to a Rotten Robbie gas station a mile away from the first location, another police car showed up. In this case, the officer entered the station smiling at me and turned his car around to face the direction of Greg’s car, a couple hundred yards away. He remained there while the device was photographed. A passenger in the police car, dressed in civilian clothes, stepped out of the vehicle to fill a gas container, then the two left shortly before the photo shoot was completed.
I bet that reporter thought that sort of thing only happened in *other* countries before that day.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
What does a citizen have to do to get this kind of personalized attention from the government? Most of the time they just ignore you unless it's time for them to steal money from your wallet.
Don't talk to him, HE is the GPS device!
A serious question, one that I hope folks take seriously because I truly cannot answer this:
If you were in front of the US Supreme Court and they asked you how this is fundamentally different than tracking your car through traditional police surveillance, how would you answer?
I struggle for an answer myself. It feels wrong, but as far as I can tell that isn't a valid legal argument.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Americans fear their government more now than at any time in history. Kind of funny if your from foreignland.
If you find a device like this on your car, have fun with it. Ship it across country - the government will know where the UPS guy is. Smash it open to see what is inside. Sell it on eBay. Report it to your local Sheriff as a suspicious device.
Seriously though...
Having cops follow you around to make their presence known is one hell of a way to use a covert surveillance device. The story isn't quite adding up.
This post comes with a double-your-money-back guarantee!
Any offense taken to this post is at your sole discretion.
As a "foreigner" who emigrated to this country and likes to make a lot of jokes that could be taken out of context- I am almost positive that I must have been spied on- if not more than for a short period of time to realise how boring I am.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
The Obama administration is arguing in front of the Supreme Court IN FAVOR of warrantless GPS tracking and searches like this.
Change you can believe in.
1) Find a place where trains pass somewhat slowly
2) Wait for slow moving train
3) Stick tracker on outside of train car
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
For liberty and justice for all. *Must be 18, void where prohibited, some restrictions may apply, not available in all states.
In the article, it's stated that he bought the vehicle with cash from his wanted, drug dealing cousin. He even went as far to drive his cousin's wife to Mexico in the vehicle afterwards. It's no wonder that he was under surveillance.
Here's the gigantic problem with the GPS trackers...
If you're being tracked, you just stop driving. Also, turn off your mobile phone before leaving. While the GPS tracker in the car lasts 7-15 days, your mobile phone lasts maybe 3. What you do is "go camping" for like a month, go visit grandma, or something, and while you're out, pitch the tracker down a manhole. They'll can't claim vandalism to their GPS tracker if it's not supposed to exist right?
If someone was really a security risk, they wouldn't own a car to begin with. It seems this is reaching for low-hanging fruit, busting drug users and not the traffickers or producers, etc.
And to think, had the limey fog-breathers thought of this 260 years ago, there would be no United States!
Apparently, oppressive oligarchies are cyclical.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I'd just smash it up and toss it.
If they send you a bill, send one back charging them more than their bill.
The administration, which is attempting to overturn a lower court ruling that threw out a drug dealer’s conviction over the warrantless use of a tracker, argues that citizens have no expectation of privacy when it comes to their movements in public so officers don’t need to get a warrant to use such devices.
Good, I've always wondered where politicians go, what hotels they stay at, etc.
Do you really think we live in a free country? Pffft!
If you're going to be a criminal, don't waste your time on chump change bullshit like drugs, child porn, gambling, ...you know guido shit.
The catch is getting into the crime sindicates.
I find one of these on my vehicle, it's getting cut open and destroyed.
What are they going to do about it?
Would it be ok if a cop hid in the boot of your car without a warrant instead?
Are there any scanning devices to scan your car to see if you have one of these hidden somewhere?
I'm sure you can do a thorough search from time to time- but if I want to know if I have one- is there a device I can buy to scan my car that isn't expensive?
I suspect all the bad guys who are really trying to hide will just run GPS blockers on their cars.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
eBay!!
Sounds like an attention whore to me. I could build a "tracking device" with some PCV pipe and get myself in the news, too.
Godaddy is a scam and a ripoff.
have no expectation of privacy and can be tracked at will by the police, do police therefore have no expectation of privacy and can be tracked at will by citizens? Sounds like a great argument. Think I'll run out, buy a bunch of these trackers, and stick them to the undercarriages of cop cars and then set up a web site that reports the position of every cop car in the city at all times in case you, um, need to call the cops.
Either that must be the case, or cops must get a warrant to do this.
If neither is the case, then the only option left to Americans is to fire every single person in every level of government with extreme prejudice, convene a constitutional convention, and start all over again from scratch.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
MOD UP!
to one of your local university football coaching team cars.
That should get a few laughs from the fans.
Yours In State College,
Kilgore Trout.
P.S.: Ron "I was abducted by Federal Reserve Employees" Paul For President !!!!.
I'm undecided on whether federal agencies should need a warrant to use a tracking device on your car, but if the person of interest here, "Greg," is trying to insinuate that the government is tracking citizens at random big-brother style, that is wildly inaccurate.
Read the full article: by his own admission, his cousin is involved in a Mexican drug cartel, and was the previous owner of the SUV. His cousin recently fled to Mexico, after which "Greg" drove his cousin's wife to Tijuana and stayed there for a few days.
He noticed the tracking device after these events. He's clearly being investigated as part of the DEA's attempt to nail his cousin. Even if a warrant were required to track him, it seems likely a judge would have granted it here.
I just found the box to change my sig. Um.... [timeless witticism].
If a particular action would be grounds for a restraining order if it occurred between private citizens, a warrant should be required before the police can engage in the same behavior.
So I agree that warrantless tracking is a bad thing. Let's get that out of the way right at the beginning.
What baffles me in this case is that they COULD HAVE GOTTEN A WARRANT!
Look. The guy's cousin is on the run for drug charges, possibly involving drug smuggling. Before taking off, he sells his car to this guy, who waits a month or two, then drives to Mexico, stays a few days, and then drives back. I'm not saying any of that is damning, but it would certainly raise questions in my mind if I were the local DEA or police representative. And assuming they had any evidence at all on the guy who fled the country, that ought to be enough to get a warrant to do some minimally invasive tracking. (Yes, it's invasive. But there isn't a person staring through his window all night, there's not an actual person following him around all the time, and so on.)
So why not go ask for a warrant? For that matter, why not ask for a warrant to do more checking on this guy and his cousin? THAT'S what bothers me about the whole thing. They had no particular reason to be underhanded about any of it, but they chose to anyway.
I find it laughable that the "Supreme Court" is presiding over a case like this when the end result will be the same, no matter what the ruling.
Does anyone actually believe that the US Government would comply with ANY court order when it comes to surveillance? Give me a break. They're going to do what they've always done, no matter what.
And this kind of shit has been going on way before things like the PATRIOT Act legitimized it...
The guy should have attached it to a taxi. The cops would have spent weeks analyzing and investigating every taxi stop.
Y'all better get used to this though. If the courts take away their ability to install GPS trackers, they'll just subpoena your cell phone records. They're already installing license plate scanners in police vehicles and traffic cameras. In a few years we'll have massive government databases with the locations of license plate readings stored so they can construct a log of where every vehicle has been.
The age of the individual was fun and I'm glad I was around to see it. I'm just thankful I don't have kids - my genes aren't a good fit for the future we're creating.
http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
Like seat-belts.
It just doesn't make sense. Also, I have no doubt the government would make smaller devices than the one's pictured and moreover there is probably a backdoor in everyone's cell phone where the NSA can find your location instantly anyway. Why track his car? Unless the government knows that the car actually comes from an alternate universe and they are waiting to see if he meets Walternate at some point. Cue Fringe theme song.
if your life is such a big joke then why should I care?
I mean, I wish they'd stick a tracker on the bottom of my elderly Citroen. They've got about ten seconds after I press the remote central locking, before it drops the suspension on them. Is tracking someone really worth having two and half tonnes of very solid steel dropped on you?
GPS tracks you.
Most tinfoil hatters are convinced the gov't wants to track their every move. They'll be so upset when they don't find one of these on their car.
Hmmm...BRB, gotta go make some fake GPS trackers to stick on some vehicles...
Vote for the person who understands that you have nothing left to lose if you allow your government to steal your liberties and freedoms for you.
It's in my sig.
You can't handle the truth.
A GPS tagger/tracker extends beyond tracking one person. It is also tracking the behavior of others who drive the vehicle.
I just happen to see something strange attached to my property. I take this object and put it on, um, the rear end of a brass statue. Because my life has alot of unemployed time, I wonder off somewhere and get out my digital camera and start clicking pictures of anyone who happens by to maybe take this strange object for their own, personal?, needs.
Question. Would watching anyone fondling the rear end of a statue go viral on YouTube?
If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear, citizen.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Question: Has a lawyer yet been able to have a warrantless GPS tracker (and all evidence obtained therefrom) thrown out as the fruit of the poisoned tree? Judges have a tendency to get really pissed off about warrants not being obtained or executed properly--for example, throwing out all the evidence obtained from a warrant because the cops did a nighttime raid, even though the warrant specified daytime.
If I found one of these I'd be tempted to think of the craziest possible places I could drive and park the car. Like maybe parking it briefly near a local brothel or crack house, and then drive and park it on the same street as a local politician or in front of the police station. Or maybe at a church one day, a mosque the next, and then a synagogue. Maybe find one of those parking garages with the spiral ramps that go round and round and round. Or maybe an abandoned parking lot on a Sunday with the same idea. Maybe take the car on a boat, drive through a tunnel (no signal), or other odd location. Also fun would be to shield it so that there is no signal, and then move a large distance ("It must be defective"). I'd certainly try to be as creative and confusing as possible. It would be especially tempting to remove the device and carry it some other way to have some real fun with locations (like cycling through impossibly narrow streets or climbing places that would be impossible for a car), and then put it back.
And towards the end I'd drive around town in a carefully mapped-out pattern that when plotted back at police headquarters would say "HA HA" or "F*** YOU".
"Theres a suspicious device underneath my car. I think it's a bomb!"
Next time, do the following:
buy your own tracking device, and make sure it looks just like theirs. Place it under your car. Smash their device. Wait for them to come pick up your device, and see where they take it.
Optionally you can bring them a visit and ask your device back.
STEP 1: Attach it to someone elses car ... someone like Herman Cain ... or your local mayor ... or the mayor's wife or kid ...
Only then do you call the media to say "Someone set us up the bomb."
It's like the first thing you do when you find a dead body floating in your swimming pool - before calling the authorities, you put it back in your neighbors' pool.
I believe I'd treat something like this the same as I would any other unidentified, obviously non-factory object found on a vehicle with no explanation for how it got there. I'd call 911, and tell them I just found what I believe looks like a pipe bomb attached to my vehicle. I'd follow that up immediately with calls to each of the local TV stations, letting them know where they could watch the police bomb squad in action.
How much would you bet the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing? It could be an interesting and entertaining afternoon. Let THEM blow it up. Hopefully not while still attached to my vehicle.
"Anonymous" Gary, Mexico and a relative with ties to the drug trade got me thinking.
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_19245339
http://www.americasquarterly.org/node/3050/
Im just sayin.. If the Feds wanted to track someone this is as good a reason as any.
By the arguments the DoJ is putting forward it should be completely reasonable to monitor law enforcement or your ex-girl/boyfriend with this. As broad an interpretation as "no expectation of privacy" as the governing reason to allow the behavior applies to everyone.
Most Law Enforcement have "extra" rights because the law spells out what they can do. If the only limit is this then every citizen should have the same ability.
so, would we get in trouble if we started attaching random boxes to police cars, and politicians cars? i'm just curious. i must say, i'm getting fed up with all of this warrantless tracking going on. I'm setting up a website where we can track government officials, and their families. post pictures, and detail their daily outings. track them day and night. i think its time they learned what it feels like to be hunted.
No reason why it might not have been placed by a private investigator. Perhaps the girl friend's parents wondering about what kind of person they had in their house?
Or if it was the feds, and he drove his cousin's wife to meet the cousin, then there is probably good reason to suppose that he may meet his cousin again.
... and the feds didn't expect it to be discovered?
Sounds like the feds needs to hire a bunch of expert "hiders of things in plain sight" (Geocachers) to give them some advice on disguising these things a bit more. Honestly, I've spent hours looking for some caches only to discover they are literally in front of my face.
Why doesn't this happen to me? Christ, I'd have so much fun with it. Stick it to a UPS truck for a couple days... then maybe a freight train... or a cargo container. OOOOO... Weather balloon! Seriously, I'd be pretty giddy if I had the chance to screw with the feds like that.
AFAIK the Patriot Act is still in effect, meaning that the USA is in a limited state of emergency and the constitution is partially suspended.
The level of cost involved used to provide a limit on the intrusiveness of the search. Police used to need to provide at least 6+ officers (2 on 8 hour shifts) to watch an individual, that means that following someone involves substantial cost to the department. The cost itself provided a check on the intrusion.
Using a tracker changes that entirely. The police can quickly check many, many trackers from a central location. They don't need to invest 6+ officers to each individual, it's 6+ suspects per officer! All of a sudden, large scale intrusion is cheap and the limit is no longer present.
That's the point you need the courts to step in and put limits in place.
If you find one on your car...then you must not have On-Star! If you do, they don't need to plant anything...its already there. Or they could just track your cell phone.
If I were to find a GPS tracker on my car, I would laugh my ass off!! Since I lost my drivers license in Feb 2010, my car has moved a whole 4 feet when I start it every week or 2. But I would remove the device, make it look like it fell off, and then run over it a few times, leaving it on the ground near where I normally park.
BTW, I do not own a cell phone partly because it could be used to track/spy on my in several ways.
Try *assassinate* underaged US citizens (born on US soil) because they could have been associated with (suspected) terrorists!
I am not talking about al-Awlaki the senior (I can see how people might be divided about him, though, I'd say, if proper Judiciary inquest into his doings were held in the open and conclude with "bring dead or alive", I would not mind much), but his 16 years old son!
http://www.salon.com/2011/10/20/the_killing_of_awlakis_16_year_old_son/
http://www.dailypaul.com/181607/obamas-assassination-order-and-the-secret-memo
Fed up yet?
Paul B.
So I'm thinking... GPS, nice lithium battery, these sound like things I would like to part out so that I could hack the components into some of the robots that I fool with. So, anyway, once somebody puts that stuff on a car, it is a gift to the car owner, right? It's abandon property. So all we need to do is set up a marketplace to clear these things (heck, even eBay) and there are enough electronics hackers looking for cheap GPS units that there should be a ready market for the parts. Once every kid in the neighborhood decides that checking under cars for tracking devices is more lucrative that collecting pop cans, problem solved.
1) Find a nearby cat ... Profit
2) Attach said device to cat (duct tape, collar or other means)
3) Watch Federal Officers attempt to retrieve they're hardware
after they realize your car can now climb walls, cross gardens and go through back doors with ease
4) Hilarity ensues
5)
Who owns what is public information. If it's downtown and you have to go
there and ask for it, that's one thing. If it's in a searchable database on the
web that gets publicized in the newspaper (happened in DC), that's a vastly
different risk to the average guy.
Don't take it off.
Right now it's probably police/gov't doing their violation of the 4th amendment.
In the future, it could be anybody sticking a tracker on you, since even if the government starts putting 'Property of U.S. government' on it, so could anyone else. It's not like you know the difference. This is also a nice way for criminals to disguise a bomb now.
So, take that last one to heart now. If you find one of these things, call 911 and tell them "I found a suspicious black box planted on my vehicle. I don't know what it is or who put it there. I'm scared it might be a bomb, please send the bomb squad."
The bomb squad getting deployed always causes lots of attention and gets on the news. It's also expensive for them to deploy. Suddenly, warantless GPS tracker deployment will start looking much less attractive to the police/gov't with the bad publicity and the actual expenses racking up.
...and then place calls to faraway lands or 1-900 numbers. You could probably rack up tens of thousands of dollars in phone or data costs by the time they realized what was going on. Maybe even more...
Running these cellular cards is not difficult. You could also read where it is SMSing the GPS info to...and modify the send positions that are well away from wherever you are. Perhaps even send the location of the police, DEA, FBI, local Republican campaign offices, church...
Then drop the package with the relay off in a nice area in the middle of a very public space and film the escapades with an HD cam.
Performance art.
So what's the big deal?
dat oughta do it.
A) Someone tracking me must do so from their own car -- they aren't allowed to climb into my backseat
B) If I driving onto private property they aren't allowed to follow me -- they only get to track me in public
C) There is a practical limitation to the number and length of traditional tracking activities, as they are expensive and time consuming, so they are only undertaken when the police believe they will eminently provide useful information. Whereas automated trackers cost almost nothing to run and could therefore be used indefinitely and on a large number of vehicles -- police are likely to use them even without an expectation of eminently useful information
Ignoring the Fourth Amendment (The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated...) the idea of Trespass to Chattels comes to mind.
Citation below taken from wikipedia
"Trespass to chattels is a tort whereby the infringing party has intentionally (or in Australia negligently) interfered with another person's lawful possession of a chattel (movable personal property). The interference can be any physical contact with the chattel in a quantifiable way, or any dispossession of the chattel (whether by taking it, destroying it, or barring the owner's access to it). As opposed to the greater wrong of conversion, trespass to chattels is argued to be actionable per se."
Adding an unwanted tracking device diminishes the value of the vehicle. Diminishing the value of a possession is one of several conditions that constitute Trespass to Chattels in the US.
I'm not sure SCOTUS would buy into the argument of torts being used to prevent such tracking, especially if the Fourth Amendment is found to be inapplicable.
Repurpose the device to accept user-supplied waypoints to transmit back to base.
Have the car follow the Colorado River, visit the top of all the highest mountains,
Cuba, Area 51 etc..
You claim that I have alternate logins.
So, name one of them.
--
BMO
Given that the police are known to do this and might well even if it is declared illegal, and that most of us don't crawl under our cars all that often, I see 2 options.
1) Block the GPS, ala http://www.thesignaljammer.com/products/GPS-Jammer.html (cheaper available).
2) You could use a cell jammer, but that may be inconvenient. Anybody know an affordable RF detector to easily pick up the cell transmitter?
3) Profit? Sorry, couldn't resist.
The reason we subjugate ourselves to law is to better procure justice. If law does not accomplish this purpose then it m
Here's the NPR story about the Supreme Court argument today. I think the full transcript will be on the Supreme Court web site.
http://www.npr.org/2011/11/08/142143552/justices-weigh-technology-and-privacy-in-gps-case
....
Justices Invoke '1984' During GPS Case Arguments
by Nina Totenberg
Dreeben, in his argument, urged the court to stick to the line it has drawn in the past — no warrant is needed for surveillance of activities conducted on public roads.
Chief Justice John Roberts, however, seemed skeptical about applying that rationale to new technologies, asking if the government could "put a GPS device on our cars and monitor us?"
Dreeben responded that under the government's theory and the court's precedents, "the justices of this court, when driving on the streets, have no greater expectation of privacy" against a GPS device attached to the car "than they would if the FBI followed them around the clock."
Justice Stephen Breyer struck a more ominous tone, asserting that "if you win this case, then there is nothing to prevent the police or the government from monitoring 24 hours a day the public movements of every citizen in the United States," a scenario that "sounds like 1984." Discussion of Orwell's dystopic novel arose five times during the argument.
Related NPR Stories
Do Police Need Warrants For GPS Tracking Devices? Nov. 8, 2011
Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked Dreeban to explain the difference between the warrantless use of GPS devices and the general search authority that outraged the Founding Fathers and inspired the Fourth Amendment ban on searches without court authorization. Dreeben maintained, however, that putting a GPS device on a car is not a search. And he seemed to suggest that people have different expectations of privacy in an era of technological advances.
That is "too much for me," interjected Justice Elena Kagan, suggesting that people would think their privacy interests are violated by having a robotic device monitoring their movements 24 hours a day.
Seeking to frame the issue differently, Justice Samuel Alito said that the "heart of the problem" is that until the Internet and computer age, it was very difficult to gather private information about an individual. "But with computers, it's now so simple to amass an enormous amount of information about people. ... So how do we deal with this?"
But Chief Justice Roberts focused more narrowly on the government's position that no warrant is required. "Your argument is, it doesn't depend how much suspicion you have, it doesn't depend on how urgent it is. Your argument is you can do it, period. It doesn't have to be limited in any way, right?" Replied Dreeben, "That is correct."
So just how difficult is it to get a warrant? Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg put that question to the government's lawyer. Dreeben conceded it would not have been difficult in this case, but, he noted, a warrant requires a showing that there is probable cause to believe a crime has occurred, and he said police most often use GPS devices at the early stages of an investigation, before there is evidence of a crime.
Sotomayor asked how many GPS devices are used this way. Dreeben said he didn't know about local and state use, but the number used by federal law enforcement was "in the low thousands" each year.
Following Dreeben to the lectern, attorney Leckar contended that because the GPS was placed on Jones' car, it was a trespass on his property and amounted to an unconstitutional seizure, a commandeering of his car to provide data. The justices, however, were looking for how to address a broader question.
Justice Anthony Kennedy asked what the difference is between putting a GPS device on a car and placing 30 deputies along a route to conduct surveillance. "It seems to me what you're saying is that the police have to use the most inefficient me
Am I the only one who's shocked at the lack of sophistication of these GPS devices? Looks like a cross between an undergrad electronics project and a "spy toy" that you'd buy for your kid. Pathetic.
I think one major difference is about not the nature of the acts, but the degree. I don't mind the occasional snapshot of me in public places; I don't like 24-hour video surveillance. I don't mind the person behind me in a check-out line seeing what I buy; I don't like complete records of all my online purchases. There is a difficulty and cost to physical tailing which meant it was only used when justified, but GPS tracking is way cheaper, which leaves it open to being used 'just in case'.
Mind you, if you carry a cell-phone, your carrier already has complete records of its movements, and I think that the government can ask for, and see, those, also without a warrant.
I guess you caught me then. I must confess, I have a secret army that searches Slashdot high and low and mods me up for everything and mods you down, specifically, on every post that they find. Even when you are anonymous, because I wrote a kit that gets your posting IP address from the Slashdot server farm. It's a personal vendetta.
--
BMO
It's ok. I live in Texas. If I find you messing with my car I'm allowed to shoot you in the head. Problem Solved!!
The tracking device in question might be an attempt to check on someone that he visits or transports from time to time. Suppose a bad guy interacts a lot with eight people. Maybe only four of them know or have anything to do with the bad guys crimes. By tracking people that he interacts with they can usually figure out who is a go between with other criminal elements or somehow benefits from the bad guys crimes. The purpose of investigation can be to eliminate people as suspects and need not be seen as an effort to get somebody for no reason.
You just spent a bunch of effort intentionally misunderstanding the other poster's statement, yet avoided making constructive suggestions for improvement. Shame on you! Would the following:
[There are] a couple [of] points I could make:"
have been intelligible? Or that hard to suggest to the previous poster? What you seem to be doing is criticizing him for writing in a colloquial manner; if that's what you meant then say it and justify why a formal style is more appropriate. Save the rancor for his real sins, like making more than two points when he clearly indicated only a couple...
Suppose someone puts a GPS unit on the judge's car, logs his location for six months, then posts it on the internet. Would he consider his privacy breached? A pattern of following someone around is called stalking and it is illegal.
The problem with these "privacy legality" arguments is that they are increasingly irrelevant. When doing something illegal is so pathetically simple as to become daily practice among millions of people in their privacy, it's just not that law that is broken, society is.
The truth of the privacy debate is that breaking the entire population's privacy is now common practice in dozens of industries - web design, databases, credit, communications, government, police. Major parts of society would just stop working if privacy were to be expected to go back to what it once was.
If you want privacy these days, you have to pay for it, and a lot. Some professionals have to keep watching and scrubbing down everything you touch, say, and do. That's jsut got to be real expensive.
At the end of the day, the rich and powerful have privacy, and nobody else does, their data is for sale. Ifg it's not for sale cheap, with more money you can get the data. The law debate will go wherever it goes, but it's just a "legalized" checkmark on a form, with no real effect.
They probably do have a warrant, since they are looking for a family member who runs drugs and its likely that he knows where the guy is hiding. Hell he's driving the guys car.
They are probably also wiretapping his cell phone. How else would they know about the rendevous with Wired?
Actually now that I think about it, I would probably sell it on ebay.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
Rather than reporting the GPS device as a bomb, attach the same sort of explosive dye packs banks use to mark robbers to the GPS? Banks use them, they must be lawful!
Is there any reason why this device has to be bigger than a cellphone? In fact it could even be smaller as it doesn't need a UI. The only relevant limiting factor is antenna size.
Isn't there a limit where it becomes harassment?
Sure! Just call the police and...
Oh.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I would remove the device and put it on a garbage truck or a school bus.Happy tracking!
Remember the uproar that a little led sign caused in Boston?
Call the local TV & radio news media!
Explain to the media you found something on your car that looks like a BOMB or perhaps a GPS tracker.
Let the media know you are calling the bomb squad.
If it's a slow news day, they might just show up!
Call the bomb squad of the local police
If they don't come to check it out, the media have another story to cover... Lack of help from Police when-bomb like device attached to person's car.
Get this sort of tracking thing out in the open! Use the system on itself.
Oh, warning: Unless you remove it, at worst, expect your car to be blown up by the Bomb Squad. At least it'd stop.
Oh, another warning: If it's really a bomb, don't remove it. Get away. Do you know the difference?
'nuff said.
Driving up to the local DEA office, walking in with the device, and waving it around to the receptionist.
Demand to talk to the office accounts payable guy, and tell them that you charge the standard mileage rate for toting around government property, and s/he should come outside and mark the mileage on the car.
Then bill the feds $0.44 cents a mile for every mile you drive with it on.
I don't think you'd ever collect, but it sounds like a fun thing to do- you could even mess with them in small claims court after a while.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
this is why I go on a 600 mile road trip spelling out I know your watching
BMO you've always been caught in the act of doing your alternate registered luser accounts mod ups of yourself here. Good to see you finally admit that you do it. It's never been a secret. Like others say here, how on earth do your two word posts get modded up? It's no secret how when you keep several registered account names here and collect up karma with them to mod your main account up with and other users here that put you in your place down with.
Reading these comments it seems that the general consensus is that doing something like this is wrong, a fairly obvious conclusion.
This comment is more directed at the agents/officers who carry out such actions. If you ever catch yourself justifying your actions by thinking "I'm just doing my job" or "I'm just following orders", then you have a moral obligation to NOT DO YOUR JOB. Ultimately you are responsible for your actions, even if those actions are directed or commanded by someone else.
That kind of thinking is what gives power to dictators, warmongers, and Hitlers. If only people would listen to their own sense or right and wrong then psychopathic assholes that run this world wouldn't have the muscle to do what they're doing.
Yeah I know the economy is in the shits and you have 5 mouths to feed back home, but personally I'd rather put a bullet to my brain than live with the fact that I helped (even to the smallest degree) to turn this country into a police state.
please....
Fuck off, APK.
How will Lightsquared's potential GPS interference play into this? If the company is allowed to continue as promised by the FCC, won't all this be moot as the weaker GPS signals won't be reliably received by anyone anymore? Also...the pictures I saw of the GPS device while attached to the spare-tire well of the car seemed to show a suspiciously clean nylon sleeve. I'd imagine any amount of travel on roads would result in the accumulation of dust/dirt that'd show up on the black nylon pretty well.
Revisiting this because I think you're hilarious.
So name one of my alternate logins.
You claim to have proof. So prove it.
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BMO
As a long term registered Republican, I hereby declare that I intend to vote for ANYONE opposing any GOP candidate, across the board. I watched this year as the Ohio and national GOP kicked me repeatedly, square in the nuts, one time too many. I am vindictive and have a long memory. I will even vote for Obama, God help me. The GOP national lineup looks like an exercise in self destruction.
The obsession the Tea Party has with Herman "Where are all da white wimmin?" Cain is particularly astonishing. Perry looks like he is stoned all the time and has the sparkling personality of Al Gore, without the intelligence. Ron Paul has some good ideas, but sprinkles them with insane ones. Michelle Bachmann is a certifiable looney with her Nobel Prize winning, genius grasp of world economics and finance. Romney is the only front runner that seems electable but he doesn't seem to know which side of the issues he's on. Maybe if he wore his magic Mormon underwear he would do better.
The Tea Party has knifed the GOP.
He's APK, he's an internet superhero. He doesn't need no stinking proof.
Justice Stephen Breyer told Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben that, “If you win this case, there is nothing to prevent the police or government from monitoring 24 hours a day every citizen of the United States.”
100 years ago, there was no Clean Water Act, no Clean Air Act, no FDA, and no Environmental Protection Agency. Meaning if someone else poisoned your food, your water, your air, you were shit out of luck.
100 years ago, you were at the mercy of monopolies that dominated entire sectors of the economy - railroads, oil, steel.
100 years ago, the Bill of Rights did not apply to the states - and some Loons like Ron Paul still hold that belief. Meaning that, among other things, state-based gun laws that give gun nuts the vapors would be perfectly legal.
100 years ago, child labor was still legal and there was no middle class.
100 years ago there was no Medicare, leaving the middle age to die in the streets from easily-treated ailments. Nowadays that only happens to 24 year old fathers with toothaches, thanks to the miracle of for-profit health insurance companies.
Could go on, but you get the point. Which is....
You're throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Just because health care and funding from education come from the same overall government that throws away a trillion dollars a year on the military-industrial-complex, when we haven't had an invasion in 200 years, doesn't mean that both forms of spending are a total waste.
Just because food, air, and water regulations come from the same overall government that spys on you without warrants doesn't mean they're both examples of authoritarian overreach.
If you had the same jaundiced eye towards businesses, you'd want them all banned because running a corporation means you'll be dumping toxic waste into the river while grouping your secretary. But you probably don't paint with such a broad brush because that would be unbelievably stupid.
Now wipe up the evidence of your drooling rage at being caught lol. You're getting it all over us as you rant and rave because your methods of bogus self upward moderation have been exposed in their mechanics as to how you and others like you (scum online) do them.
The adventures of *Captain Paranoid*. I see no apk here so you must fear him.
Yet you can't point to a single account that you think is mine.
Please, prove your point, or walk away in defeat.
Shit or get off the pot.
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BMO