Warrantless GPS Tracking Isn’t A “Search”
According to the 7th Circuit, cops can place a GPS tracking device on your vehicle, without warrant, based on a claim of suspicion. That claim doesn’t ever have to be justified to a judge, and since it doesn’t require a warrant, “probable cause” is whatever the officer thinks it is. The device will be similar to those available from firms who specialise in fleet tracking to ensure businesses can manage their drivers and trucks whereabouts. If you’d like to find out more, you can click here to go to the Autoconnect website.
From engadget:
Earlier this month, the Seventh Circuit of the US Court of Appeals “ruled against a defendant who claimed that the surreptitious placement of a GPS tracking device amounted to an unconstitutional search,” essentially giving the coppers the green light to add a GPS module to a suspicious ride sans a warrant. While we’re sure the privacy advocates out there are screaming bloody murder, the district judge found that they had had a “reasonable suspicion that the defendant was engaged in criminal activity,” and it seems that a well-placed hunch is all they need for lawful placement. Interestingly, the government argues that no warrant was needed since “there was no search or seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment,”
I guess my post over the weekend on RFID tracking didn’t even take into account that they’re already doing it with GPS.
Now, I don’t really like the idea of government being able to track with GPS. Just like I don’t like the idea that the Department of Homeland Security might tap our phones. What is truly disturbing, though, is when they try (and courts uphold) their ability to do it without any sort of oversight. I worry about giving government power; I’m truly terrified of giving them unaccountable power.
As I pointed out in my RFID post, most of you won’t ever have to worry about this. After all, you haven’t done anything wrong. And the bulk of the usage that cops and politicians will get out of these sort of technologies will be for actual lawbreakers (even if they’re breaking stupid laws like those of the War on Drugs). But the tools are also tools of harassment. And as the Manassas Park story shows us, it’s a tool to harass YOU if you make powerful enemies.
But it can spread wider. The state has the power, and libertarians are consistently making themselves enemies of the state. With the labyrinth of laws, so widespread that nobody can exist without breaking laws; this gives the state power to “legally” harass people who don’t serve its purposes or actively work against them. You know, people like me. It’s just fine to call the state a bumbling, stumbling fool, but it’s pretty difficult to defend yourself when that fool takes aim at you.
Hat Tip: Radley Balko @ Hit & Run
