Supreme Court Rules Warrants Needed for GPS Monitoring

gambit3 writes "The Supreme Court has issued its ruling in the case of Washington, D.C. nightclub owner Antoine Jones, saying police must get a search warrant before using GPS technology to track criminal suspects. A federal appeals court in Washington overturned his drug conspiracy conviction because police did not have a warrant when they installed a GPS device on his vehicle and then tracked his movements for a month."

Comments

Warrants

[mindcandy]

Depends on the judge (I do a lot of subpoena work, on boths sides).

I have seen some that are "rubber stamped" with only a vague description of what they're after (eg: "computer equipment") .. I have seen some where the judge says "Apartment #3 is not sufficient to identify the residence" and "Computer equipment does not sufficiently identify the property sought" and the police had to go back and get permission (from the landlord) to take a picture of the door and go back to the judge along with serial numbers and such of the devices.

The judge in the 2nd case is doing it right .. because what if the police work is sloppy and the stolen computer is serial number AB123456 and you have a computer that's DE78910 but the same exact model .. guess which defendant is getting their stuff back.

Re:Ruling.....

[larry bagina]

Even crazier -- it was a fucking unanimous decision. Not one of them disagreed with the fundamentals.