In the recent case U.S. vs. Jones 10-1259, the Supreme Court expressed “deep concerns” over law enforcement agencies’ use of GPS tracking without a warrant. Law enforcement has previously grouped placing a GPS tracking device on a suspect’s car with other surveillance activities that do not require a warrant, such as following a suspect and rifling through their trash. Lower courts have previous ruled that attaching GPS tracking devices without a warrant is acceptable, citing a ruling from 28 years ago about police using short-range tracking to follow beeper signals for more accurate suspect tailing as precedence. But the ruling cited concerned less powerful tracking technology where the law enforcement officer still had to actively tail the suspect in a car to maintain tracking, rather than simply relying on a satellite to transmit a location to their computer.
Law enforcement agencies like the convenience of GPS tracking devices because they don’t have to send officers to spend valuable man-hours huddled in an unmarked car across the street from a suspect’s building or risk losing their suspects tailing them through heavy traffic. The fundamental usefulness of GPS tracking is clearly there, but without requiring a warrant, innocent individuals can have their privacy compromised as it becomes permissible to track anyone via GPS for any reason.
In similar news, until recently the Department of Justice (DoJ) maintained that the use of “stingrays” was constitutional. A “stingray” is a fake cellphone tower that allows a governmental body to track a cellphone GPS-style, regardless of whether it is in use or not. The DoJ insisted that this was not a violation of the constitutionally-protected Fourth amendment search and seizure rights of an individual because courts were willing to issue warrants for this technology and an individual did not have a “reasonable expectation” of privacy when it comes to their cell phone’s location, sending texts and making calls.
But the DoJ was also deleting the tracking information obtained and messages intercepted by the “stingray” before they could be scrutinized by the courts, under the guise of protecting the privacy rights of innocent individuals’ data who were also collected along with the suspect’s data. In court, law enforcement agencies present not the actual data gathered but a second-party summary of what the data supposedly was.
Due to this inconsistency the DoJ has since revised their stance, admitting that the use of “stingrays” did constitute a violation of the Search and Seizure rights outlined in the Fourth Amendment. While not admitting any actual fault, they insinuated that filtering out the legitimate data from otherwise illegally intercepted messages, calls, and location via GPS constituted a violation of the rights of innocents because they did not have warrants for the information inadvertently obtained at the same time as the information they did have warrants for. It stands to reason that if it’s illegal to obtain the electronic location information of a person without a warrant via cellphone GPS, it would be illegal to obtain it electronically via attaching a device to their car without a warrant as well.
The Supreme Court will most likely issue a ruling in the spring of 2012, and I sincerely hope they overturn warrantless GPS tracking as an illegal violation of privacy. Just because a technology exists doesn’t mean law enforcement should be able to use it without presenting evidence of just cause as to why it should be used. GPS tracking requires a device to be attached to an individual’s vehicle, a piece of personal property. The Patriot Act already allows for the most reprehensibly invasive violations of our privacy has already made most forms of physical and electronic surveillance methods permissible with little to no justification. We don’t need to continually interpret its tenets on broader terms to incorporate new and more heinous ways for the government to invade our privacy.