Court allows agents to secretly put GPS trackers on cars

That's a pretty bad rationale. Our system is based on the idea of innocent until proven guilty so anytime the police investigate someone they don't know ahead of time that they have done anything wrong just have a suspicion. Just allowing police open ended surveillance can lead to a lot of abuses.

In regard to this situation I think the ease of doing something like this means that it could very well lead to abuse if police don't need to justify doing so ahead of time.

Also taking this issue further than just the police if placing a tracking device on someone's car is not an invasion of privacy what is to stop individual citizens from doing so? I think due to how much this increases the ability to track people without their consent a line should be drawn regarding the use of these things.

 

In the same line of thinking, though, when a cop follows someone, it's surveillance. When a private citizen follows someone, it's stalking.

 

i assume you made this comment because the roberts court has 4 conservative, maybe 5, members. you forget that the 9th circuit court (that handed down this ruling) is perhaps the most "liberal" in the country.

didn't finish the thread yet, so pardon me if someone else mentioned this, but perhaps the most important aspect of this ruling is that the car in question was on private property, in the driveway, not on the street.

there's a name for socialist totalitarians...it'll come to me in a minute....

 

i understand innocent until proven guilty, but you can't prove someone guilty if you aren't allowed to collect evidence and data. The cops were investigating this guy for durgs. They needed evidence to tie him to it so they used the locations he went to, which were pot farms presumably (i'm sure there was other evidence as well). That seems like a very reasonable approach and not "open ended" by any means. This was a very tactical use.


i talked about the abuse aspect earlier.

 

Why can't they get a warrant first?

 

Maybe that's what people have the biggest problem with. But sure, if they do have to go into private property to do it i'm ok with that...i just don't know how difficult of a process getting a warrant is so you'd hate for an investigation to be held up due to red tape of paperwork

 

if it's deemed important, you can get a warrant in 15 minutes. There's always a presiding judge on duty.

Doesn't seem like a lot of red tape to me.

 

I think the GPS would lower the value of my car, so I think this is a problem... especially if these new-fangled GPS trackers are the size of my vintage cell phone.

 

This a clear violation of privacy rights in my book. There is no way around it or any justification whatsoever. The arguments in favor of this are all completely flawed.

The police "already use surveillance" excuse is flawed. While the police can follow someone and track them any number of ways but none of them involve violating the private property rights of the individual. Furthermore if you reason that tracking via GPS is just an efficient method of doing surveillance that is already legal then you are wrong. For example, a police officer can also go undercover and use a wire on his own body to record but unlike spy movies, he cannot place a wire anywhere inside the private property of the suspect to record. Phone wiretapping and an actual undercover officer are the only two forms of wires permitted in court. Therefore, extending this to right invade the private property of an individual has other consequences than just tracking suspects via GPS. What about planting a wire on private property?

 

2 words: aluminum foil

 

OK - where is the clear dividing line and why there specifically?

 

But the Constitution says nothing about how easy something is as a defining rationale whether it is legal or not. If, legally, we're OK with manual surveillance, there's nothing in terms of principle that makes this any different. It's just really a process of making a procedure more efficient.

Here is where I think the key lies - is there something fundamentally different about the action because they planted a device on the car itself? That's the key Constitutional question here.

 

Disturbing. The car itself is private property, it shouldn't matter how they accessed the car. What's the difference between putting a GPS on someone's car and putting a a camera in that person's front yard to watch them come and go? This is very dangerous. Like RR said, what's to stop the police from GPS'ing everyone's car in that case, maybe doing it through the license plate itself? They can monitor an entire city if they want.

This is to me an extension of cell phone tracking except at least your cell phone is emitting a signal that is tracked and they're not physically tracking the cell phone itself. I think that's an important distinction.

 

This = 1984. All for growing mar1juana. What a stupid use of resources and a very dangerous precedent.

 

4. Cops using a little robot to follow you.
5. Cops using unmanned drones in the sky to follow you.
6. Cops putting a mobile tracker on your car.
7. Cops sneaking into the back seat of your car and following you.

#1-3 are clearly legal and used all the time. No one seems to have a problem with it. #7 is clearly considered unacceptable/illegal. 4-6 all fall in the grayer area. What is the logic wherever something thinks the line should be? What is the Constitutional issue dividing 3 from 4? Or 4 from 5. Or 5 from 6. That's the key as far as the courts finding something unconstitutional.


Doing any of those things amounts to an invasion of privacy, in my opinion.

FOURTH AMENDMENT [U.S. Constitution]

'The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.'

Why do I have to discuss this with you? Honestly, a man of your intelligence can't see that those "gray areas" you mentioned don't amount to a violation of the 4th amendment of the constitution? Seriously? You are confused?

 

I'm shocked at the number of people who think this is okay without getting a warrant. I thought this would be one of those topics everyone would be in agreement with.