Supreme Court rules: Warrant needed for GPS tracking - Technology & science - Security. WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that police must get a search warrant before using GPS technology to track criminal suspects. The ruling represents a serious complication for law enforcement nationwide, which increasingly relies on high tech surveillance of suspects, including the use of various types of satellite technology. A GPS device installed by police on Washington nightclub owner Antoine Jones' Jeep helped them link him to a suburban house used to stash money and drugs. He was sentenced to life in prison before the appeals court overturned the conviction.
Associate Justice Antonin Scalia said that the government's installation of a GPS device, and its use to monitor the vehicle's movements, constitutes a search, meaning that a warrant is required. "By attaching the device to the Jeep" that Jones was using, "officers encroached on a protected area," Scalia wrote. All nine justices agreed that the GPS monitoring on the Jeep violated the U.S. Related: Supreme Court Relies on Kerr’s Theory of Fourth Amendment and Property. 10-1259 United States v. Jones (01/23/2012) Kerr Defends the Third-Party Doctrine. Orin Kerr is a law professor at George Washington University and a blogger on the popular Volokh Conspiracy.
He is a thoughtful, open-minded legal scholar, but I don’t think it’s unfair to say that he reliably sides with law enforcement on Fourth Amendment issues. He recently posted a draft article defending the third-party doctrine, which is an interpretation of the Fourth Amendment holding that a person sharing information with a third party cannot make a Fourth Amendment claim to protection of that information. Use an ISP to transmit your email? No Fourth Amendment protection for its contents. He treats as similar two issues that I see as separate: revelations gleaned from informants/agents and from business records. I think the third-party doctrine was never right, and that it grows more wrong with each step forward in modern, connected living.
The basic gist of the article is that the third-party doctrine is better than most people think, for two reasons. Supreme Court GPS Tracking Case: Round-up and Resources. Updated February 20, 2012 UNITED STATES v. JONES 615 F. 3d 544, affirmed. From Cornell University Legal Information Institute [HTML version has links to cited cases]: From the Supreme Court and American Bar Association websites: Legislation In his written opinion, “Alito said the court and Congress should address how expectations of privacy affect whether warrants are required for remote surveillance using electronic methods that do not require the police to install equipment, such as GPS tracking of mobile telephones.
Legislating Privacy after US v. For a list of proposed location privacy legislation as of Fall 2011, visit the home page of Kevin Pomfret’s Centre for Spatial Law and Policy. Law Review Articles and Essays Case Summaries and Commentaries (disclaimer: opinions and analyses are those of the original authors, not all may be accurate) February 2012 January 2012 Older posts US v. Syllabus UNITED STATES v. No. 10–1259. SCALIA, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS, C.