Do Police Need Warrants For GPS Tracking Devices?

Source - NPR

Possibly the most disturbing thing I have read this year....

The United States Supreme Court, an institution steeped in tradition, steps into the turbulent world of new technology on Tuesday. At issue before the Court is whether police must get a warrant from a judge before they can attach a GPS tracking device to a car so they can monitor a suspect's every movement for an indefinite period of time.

...The government appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, contending that no warrant is required when a car is on public roads. And the Supreme Court hears arguments Tuesday in the case.

...So why not get a warrant first? Because to get a warrant, police have to show they have probable cause to believe a crime is occurring or has occurred. And the government says that GPS tracking is particularly useful at the early stages of an investigation — before probable cause can be established.

I'll keep this short as there are so many things wrong with this idea I could go on for days.

If this is allowed then the US officially/instantly/completely becomes a police state, plain and simple. GPS is now a common feature of most cars and an option in almost all others. It is a very short leap from attaching a GPS to monitoring the already present system.

Even more worrisome however is the far reaching implications for cell phones, every single one of them now containing GPS units as well...

While today's case involves GPS devices, it could have enormous repercussions for other devices in the information age. What about cameras that photograph people on the public streets? What about cell phones that can be tracked whenever they are on?

Defense attorney Dellinger maintains those are different: the cameras are stationary, and the cell phones can be turned off.

That's not reassuring in any way, in fact, all he did was point out the limitations of those systems.

If the SC allows this then you can bet your life savings that the switch will be thrown before the judge is finished rendering his verdict.

At least there are some who understand where this leads and openly say so...

...Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, a native of Communist Romania who immigrated to the United States with his parents in 1962 when he was twelve, dissented. "There is something creepy and un-American about such clandestine and underhanded behavior," he wrote of the warrantless placing of GPS tracking devices.

"To those of us who have lived under a totalitarian regime, there is an eerie feeling of déjà vu."

Read Justice Alex Kozinski's words again folks.

Unbelievable, almost.

Thank you, Mr. President. I hope your progressive lackeys are proud of you. This is a prime example of the freedom and liberty progressives hold signs for.

/TOA

Funny, the US now seems like it has something in common with North Korea, Germany before WW2, or Iran.

Maybe some country will eventually free America because it looks pretty clear we can't free ourselves

Your cell phone is a more valuable tracking device than anything. But, placing their own doo hicky on your car allows them to track in REALTIME with pinpoint accuracy. Yeah, your phone can GPS track in realtime...but they don't have authority to activate your phone remotely to turn GPS on for real time location information, YET. So your phone companies simply give the police and federal agencies (FBI, ATF, etc.) your personal cell phone tower communication data. Which shows what cities and locations you were in by the minute and seconds. Not useful for pinpoint or realtime tracking but useful for tracking in general.

The CIA and NSA will track you regardless of what any court or law says. Nothing will impede them, not even technologically.

They do whatever they want now and laws do not apply to them as far as they are concerned. Even when someone bothers to blow the whistle on law enforcement breaking the law nothing is done about it.

I found this white paper on using tire pressure monitoring sensor transmissions to track vehicles. The TPMS is the first wireless network in vehicles and are going into all new cars starting in 2012. Cops are able to use cameras to read and record license plates passing a point. This would be another way to do the same thing. In the transmission from the tire sensor is encoded a unique id code for the vehicle. www.winlab.rutgers.edu...