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Judge Doesn't Care About Supreme Court GPS Case
nonprofiteer writes "The Supreme Court is currently deciding whether or not law enforcement needs a warrant before they put a GPS tracker on a person's car. A judge in St. Louis doesn't seem to care about that, though. He ruled last week (PDF) that the FBI didn't need a warrant to track the car of a state employee they suspected was collecting a paycheck without actually going to work. (Their suspicions were confirmed.) While in favor of corrupt government employees being caught, it's a bit disturbing that a federal judge would decide a warrant wasn't needed while the Supreme Court has said the issue is unclear."
unclear does not mean one way or the other, until then its the decision of the local law
Was this Judge Honey Badger, by any chance?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
I'm pretty sure a lower court judge can't just throw out a case because the Supreme Court will probably make a decision sometime later in the year that MAY OR MAY NOT contradict his own. The author of this article makes it sound like, just because some Justices expressed some reservations in their questioning of the case, that it's a foregone conclusion they're going to rule GPS tracking unconstitutional. Personally, I find it highly doubtful that such a conservative court is going to do any such thing. I suspect they'll either come up with some dodge of the issue (overruling on some narrow technicality or something) or outright uphold United States v. Antoine Jones as constitutional.
The present-day SCOTUS is little more than a rubber stamp for the President and Congress. And even when they do make the rare controversial ruling, it's for some conservative political end (like the Citizen's United case), not in some noble defense of citizens' Constitutional rights. I would frankly be surprised if anyone in that chamber has even *glanced* at the U.S. Constitution since they took a required class on it once in law school. The fact that Barack Obama can all but abolish habeas corpus and due process with the stroke of a pen without them so much as raising an eyebrow should let you know where those nine stooges stand on the U.S. Constitution.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
At first I thought I read "government owned vehicle" but then I realized this was a government employee with a personally owned vehicle.
This is the WRONG APPROACH. These types of short-sighted rulings open doors for vary bad behavior on the part of government. There are other ways to confirm the behavior of a suspect... of course those ways are less lazy and I guess that's what we are trying to enable the government to be... is lazy... and to collect their pay checks for doing nothing... oh the irony.
So should judges to just sit on their hands and stall until the Supreme Court has told them how to decide the cases in front of them? Or should they do their job and decide those cases promptly, based on their understanding of the existing case law? If the Supreme Court later says that their interpretation is incorrect then it gets overturned, if not then it stays in force. I hate to break it to you, but there are countless legal questions where the Supreme Court has not yet ruled on them, such as one Court of Appeals ruling one way, and another ruling differently. Until a case makes its way to the Supreme Court to settle the question, judges are supposed to continue hear and decide cases; that's their job.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Wouldn't it have been easier and more efficacious to sit at the guy's work and see if he showed up or not? People can get to work a variety of ways, and a variety of people can use cars.
It's a state-owned car, same as a state- or company-owned computer.
Uhhhh, rtfm, please. The car was registered to Robinson. It wasn't a state-owned car, except in the left-field sense that the state owns us all and we are merely wage slaves supporting the current regiem.
The Circuit courts have issued rulings on this that are applicable until the SCOTUS rules otherwise. The fine document contains the legal arguments against the claims that such tracking is a search or a siezure and thus violates the fourth amendment, both of which are quite rational and sound. Nobody has an expectation of privacy regarding the location of their vehicle when it is on the public streets, and there is no seizure.
1) Court rules it legal to install GPS trackers on cars you don't own, as long as they're publicly accessible.
2) Install 3G-connected GPS trackers on any unattended police cruisers.
3) Incorporate current live location of police vehicles into iPhone/Android app.
4) Profit!
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
The summary of this article is just wrong. The Supreme Court has not said that the issue is unclear - it has merely agreed to hear a case about whether a specific decision made by the U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Columbia conflicts with existing Supreme Court precedent.
To the extent that you can infer anything from the Supreme Court's grant of certiorari, it is equally likely to conclude that they took the case in order to slap down the D.C. Circuit's novel approach to the 4th Amendment.
The existing precedent, by the way, is that we have no reasonable expectation of privacy in our cars. As a result, it is not an "unreasonable" search or seizure to attach beepers or other devices to our cars in order to monitor our movements.
In fact, the judge in this case does an excellent job summarizing and applying the relevant case law. He points to a case from the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals (which is the relevant circuit for St. Louis) clearly stating that putting a tracker on a car and then later retreiving it is not a constitutionally prohibited search or seizure.
Agree or disagree on whether we have a reasonable expectation of privacy in our cars - the judge in this case acted properly. It would have violated another constitutional right - the one to a speedy trial - if he had simply delayed the issuance of his opinion until after the Supreme Court issues its (entirely discretionary) opinion.
What a silly article.
Slashdot has so many comments boiling down to "Judges don't understand technology, and they look foolish when they rule on it anyways."
Then we have this article and it's responses, which basically boil down to "A bunch of technologists don't understand the law and the mechanism of precedence, and they look foolish when they comment anyways."
From the linked story, there are two issues before the Supreme Court:
1. Does using a GPS device to follow you around without a warrant violate your Fourth Amendment rights? There's extra language in there, too: A key point seems to be that when they're following you around, they're doing so on the public streets. The argument could be made that following your car is different from a wiretap in this respect, in that you have a reasonable expectation of privacy when you're talking on the phone at home, but you have no such expectation when you leave the house and go out in public. Is following you via GPS really any different than tailing your car visually?
2. Does planting the GPS device without a warrant, in and of itself, violate your Fourth Amendment rights? Maybe -- but one could argue that by planting the device, they have no more "searched" you than they would have had they driven past your house and seen the car in the driveway. They haven't done much more than a parking cop does when he puts chalk on the tire of your car. And they've haven't "seized" anything -- in fact, you now have something that you didn't have before.
These seem like complicated issues and I'm interested to hear what the Supremes think about them.
Some problems with that argument:
1) Nowhere does the Fourth Amendment contain a caveat that implies our right to be free from search and seizure without warrant does not apply in public places; in fact, I would contend that ensuring the populace is able to travel freely is a big part of why that particular right is enumerated. Had the British Empire been able to track the movements of General Washington with such precision, you can bet there would be no such thing as the United States of America.
2) Even though it is often operated on "public streets," my vehicle is still private property and subject to applicable laws; placing a GPS device on my vehicle without permission or warrant, for the purpose of conducting surveillance, is no different than searching the interior of said vehicle without permission or warrant.
3) Can't speak for anywhere else, but I know in Missouri it is illegal for an officer to follow a vehicle for more than a proscribed distance without a warrant, else the officer can be prosecuted for harassment. So, unless the cops are pulling me over and removing/reattaching the device every few miles, or they have a warrant, this practice would be in flagrant violation of Missouri statute.
4) I don't know about you, but I park my car in my private garage, which is an enclosed structure on private property; Meaning, when I come home and park at the end of the day, the police have effectively placed a piece of surveillance equipment in my home without my permission or a lawful warrant.
Basically, my stance on this and all related issues is thus: If law enforcement has such a hard time obeying the Constitution by obtaining a lawful warrant, perhaps it's time we find them something more productive for them to do, or start culling the herd.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I know it's common to comment without RTFA, but to make a statement of fact regarding the article without reading it is something else entirely.
"Issue: (1) Whether the warrantless use of a tracking device on respondent's vehicle to monitor its movements on public streets violated the Fourth Amendment; and (2) whether the government violated respondent's Fourth Amendment rights by installing the GPS tracking device on his vehicle without a valid warrant and without his consent."
Why not
a) ask X, "Are you going to work? If so where? Who is your supervisor?"
b) ask supervisor, "Has X been into work the last M days?"
c) ask accounting, "Has X been getting paid?"
the car doesn't matter.
The Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause applies only to state governments. For the judicial system your looking at the due process clause in the Fifth Amendement. Having each circuit have its own limited common law doesn't violate due process. You still have a process that is formalized and the same across the country.