Comments on: Court says police can use GPS to track anyone

An appeals court in Wisconsin declares that police can use GPS to track anyone they like, without having to apply for a search warrant.

[ewelch]

Slowly but surely, little bits of our rights are taken from us until they are all gone. It's not the big leaps to worry about, it's the person who thinks losing a little of their constitutional rights is that big a deal.

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.' - Benjamin Franklin

"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the American Flag." Sen. Huey Long

[setjeff15081947]

Ah, "ewelch", I like your thinking ... and your quoting. May I add another by Benjamin Franklin? "Freedom is a wonderful thing. I hope we're smart enough to keep it." You are on the bullsye,and we must be ever vigilant to those who wish to steal from us in minute bites. Obviously, we cannot rely on the courts in Wisconsin ... But, what can you expect from a state that would have a city such as Milwaukee?

[sharmajunior]

One can also use a GPS to spy on a suspected cheating spouse....Absolutely brilliant idea....

[jmans1212]

I know police officers and I don't think any of them would use this tatic. And how do we know that it is just a GPS device. When items are so small that they can combine both gps and a listening device all in one.

But my biggest issue is that to plant the device they have to place it somewhere on your body or property and in doing so doesn't that in fact violate search and seizure or some other protected right?

"Those that would sacrifice a little freedom for security deserve neither and will lose both."

[nicmart]

No cops would do this? You must be bonkers. This is an appalling decision which reflects the evaporation of freedom in the American police state.

[Fire Balls]

Most of the cops I have known are crooked. It's sad to say but we see them breaking the law everyday or over stepping their bounds. There are the exception and maybe it's just where I am at but for the most parts they are just thugs with a gun and a badge. I really wish I could feel safe and protected by cops instead of watching them not really care about real crimes. I have had my place of residence broken into several times of the past years and they couldn't have cared less. Also I have been harassed by one cop that said he if I didn't call him sir he would arrest me.. (crazy huh). Come to find out it was the sheriff (not a deputy) so complaining about it to the department got me nowhere. Police wonder why some people don't like them and the reason is their own fault. Don't get me wrong I like the idea of Police and what they are suppose to stand for. But too many have lost sight of the serve and protect. Really it's to the point I wouldn't call 911 anymore unless it was a medical emergency. And it's nothing less then sad.

[MarionIN]

I see the day when EVERY vehicle comes standard equiped with these and it will be against the law to disable them. Vehicles are used on state and federal roads and like a drivers license, it is a privilage and not a right. They will continue to take everything very carefully and slowly until we have handed ourselves over as slaves to the state- all the while praising them for keeping us safe. As long as we are good little sheep we have nothing to fear.

I have to side with the court. I think its great that relatively cheap technology can be used to do something as costly as 24 hr police survelance. They dont need a warrant to follow you around, so why should they need one to have a device follow you around?

[MarionIN]

Would you mind if I followed you around? Probably. You don't know if I am a professional police officer or not. Just because someone is an officer employed by the state or federal government does not make them a stable and safe individual. I know this to be FACT from personal experience and it is not my intention to speak badly of either agency.

[ooprus]

Seems like a BIG flaw is they are not following YOU, they are following your car. If I lend my car to a friend or family member, then an actual police observation could SEE my friend is driving the car. A GPS device doesn't know the difference, which seems like it makes the evidence pretty flimsy in court. If the GPS data is viewed as credible evidence, it seems like a way for a criminal to be home in his garage, when he acually is out committing a crime. The GPS data would show he car in his garage. Unless they attach the GPS to your BODY, it doesn't
track your BODY.

[gsekse]

My question is, if the police place GPS device on your car and you find it, is it yours to keep? 8)
Also, would it be legal to take the device and attach it to the next semi leaving town? I mean, if THEY can attach it without a warrant, why can't I?

[SergeM256]

I guess same court would decide - if It is legal to put GPS on somebody's else car, then whoever owns this GPS device dos not violates anything and his property rights not be infringed.
If you find GPS attached to your car, you
- cannot remove it from the car and/or attach it to another car - it would be interfering with police investigation;
- cannot destroy, damage, disable, or reprogram the device - it's property of police department;

[Perry_Clease]

@SergeM256 "If you find GPS attached to your car, you cannot remove it from the car and/or attach it to another car it would be interfering with police investigation"

What investigation? Does the person under surveillance know that he is being investigated? If he is engaged in illegal activity then you can expect that law enforcement is watching you. However if you are not suspected of a crime you are not being investigated, you are being fished.

If this becomes law then we can be sure it will be tested in the Supreme Court sooner rather than later.

[Kalama]

This will give a new meaning to the tem "shanghaied " ..... If you live near a port ... attach it to a fast ship to Shanghai !

I can just see the "investigation / travel request" to the Chief of Police. "Sir, our device is some where in the N. Central Pacific <Ocean>, west bound; we've got to go find our where this vehicle is. Might be a stolen car / truck stashed away in a container and being sold overseas. We've gotta' go protect our citizens' property."

And the D.A.'s office will want to send 3 of their top people to make certain the investigation is not fouled up ... <<grin>>

All this of course on the public dime.

[daimajinbuu]

God...please get me off this planet.

[vanareb]

Actually there are more police cars tracked by their own departments using GPS in the United States than citizens would ever be tracked by investigators. Buses, Taxicabs and more than 99% of the big trucks on the highway that carry hazardous materials are being tracked by GPS. The equipment is expensive and the cost of real time tracking isn't cheap but it is less expensive than the several thousand dollars a week it costs to keep someone under visual surveillance 24/7. The down side is that the batteries go dead, they fall off and get crushed by other cars, they don't work very well in tunnels and parking garage, they require periodic maintenance and visual verification that they haven't been moved to another vehicle.

As a private investigator, I've used them, so far only by permission, but they are generally more trouble than you would expect.

It is unlikley police would ever track anyone unless they were already under investigation and therefore subject to visual surveillance. Any officer who appropriates goverment property or services for personal use, for instance, to track a cheating spouse, has committed a crime and should be prosecuted or sued.

John Q. Citizen has little to fear that the police will install a tracking device on his vehicle. They don't have the time, the funds, or the inclination to follow people they don't aready suspect of some crime.

Most GPS devices only show where the device or vehicle is located although you can deduce average speed by measuring the time between points. They don't take pictures , listen to or record conversations. Listening devices still require a warrant. GPS trackers don't provide any information that could not be obtained by simply following the suspect, which they don't need a warrant t do.

If they place the device inside the passenger compartment or trunk of the vehicle they still need a warrant.

If you want to pay the money, it would be perfectly legal for you to put one on a police car and follow them as well, but I don't recommend it because there are ways to find out who is using the device.

Unless you are a criminal, worrying about the police following you is more than a bit paranoid. Not much of what we do interests them at all. Police currently have the capability via infrared imagery to scan your house and determine where you are inside the house and get a general idea about what you are doing by your heat signature, but they don't, because they couldn't care less. Almost all police helicopters have infrared scanners on them, you can probably find the videos on youtube. That is way more intrusive than a GPS tracker.

If you want to worry about something, worry about why, when big insurance, bank, investment, and auto executives do LOUSY jobs they get million dollar bonuses paid for with your tax dollars, but when the average person does a lousy job, they get fired, but still have to pay income taxes on their unemployment checks. I think that is way more worthy than criticizing the police who are trying to save tax dollars and improve efficiency.

[jmfb_k7]

"it would be perfectly legal for you to put one on a a police care and follow them as well"...

I smell an IPhone App where all the cop cars have "secret" gps devices and you can see them moving on Google Maps. Better than a radar detector and perfectly legal in all 50 states.

Props to the Wisconsin Appeals Court.

[Copter808]

>>Police currently have the capability via infrared imagery to scan your house and determine where you are inside the house and get a general idea about what you are doing by your heat signature<<

As far as I know, NO police agency has the capability to track you(by Thermal Imaging) inside your home, unless it's through an open window or someplace NOT surrounded by glass or other materials. If any police department DOES have that capability it most certainly is NOT in common use! Probably most police helicopters have TI cameras, but they have limitations.

It probably would not be a good iea to track a police car in real time, but the information may be available via the FoI (Freedom of Information) act to get records of past use, assuming the squad has GPS and the information is recorded by the agency.

BTW, don't try attaching a GPS transmitter to someone elses verhicle in Illinois--it is NOT lgal in most cases!

[jbolsen]

Your key argument here seems to be that it is too expensive and too much trouble to do this on a large scale and it will therefore only be used on people who are (presumed to be) criminals already.

The two problems with that is:
1. In this country it is up to the courts to decide if a person is a criminal or if enough evidence suggest that more investigation is needed (i.e. issue a warrent). This ruling states that a warrent is not needed and therefore any officer can do it for any or no reason at all.

2. As with any other technology, this will get cheaper and cheaper and more features will be added. Perhaps it will once be so cheap that the cost is negligible and police can track all US citizens at all times.

Sooner or later this issue will have to be decided for all of us - perhaps in supreme court.

[Harrison912]

Thanks, Vanareb. I totally agree. As a web site owner of safety and security products, I'm always on the side of the law and anything that can make their job of catching bad guys easier. If you are a law abiding citizen, you should have no worries about the police tracking your every move. You are absolutely right when you say it's the criminals they are trying to keep an eye on and we should all be glad for that.

[nicmart]

"As a web site owner of safety and security products, I'm always on the side of the law and anything that can make their job of catching bad guys easier. If you are a law abiding citizen, you should have no worries about the police tracking your every move." -- Harrison912

Many people share that poster's insidious views. When government power reaches the tipping point, the power-hungry and their boot-lickers are delighted to kick ass and take prisoners.

Runaway slaves and those who aided them were not law abiding citizens, and neither were Rosa Parks or M. L. King. The American colonists broke British laws, the Jews broke Nazi laws, and the Tiananmen Square students broke Chinese laws. Oft-times the right and just side is the side of the lawbreaker.

[MarionIN]

I will be waiting for the law against civilians placing trackers on police cars. The police only work in one direction...Their way! It will be illegal for us to do what they do. I am sure they already have some catch-all covering law to protect themselves from their own "legal" actions.

[Copter808]

Why would you want to do that in the first place? The information is likely available through the FoI act if the agency keeps records of it's tracking. Many squads already have GPS installed.

[SergeM256]

What FOI Act? We are talking about tracking in real time with GPS devices transmitting their location in real time.
It is legal for police to put tracking device on private citizen's car because police could collect same information by following that car. Applying same logic it is legal for private citizen to put tracking device on police car because it is legal to follow police car and report its location.
GPS device is relatively cheap, millions of volunteers throughout the country may put GPS devices on police cars and then you may see on Google Maps in real time where they are. Of course police is always one step ahead of us and before we manage to monitor movement of police cars, well, there would be no police cars, automated system would write traffic tickets without any human interaction.

[MarionIN]

Monitor your tax dollars at work. Track the police. As long as they are not doing anything wrong they should not mind. Right? Just because we as civilians can monitor police does not mean we will. Right? We all could care less what they do, we have our own business to take care of. Why do I have the fealing their logic turned upon themselves will never work?

[digitaldirect]

You do realize they can do this via your mobile phone already? This is a great idea and if it is used correctly could seriously help get crime off our streets!!

[MarionIN]

If the police track me it is called surveillance. An individual doing the same is stalking. What about an insurance company or business owner to see how often I go by their place of business? Where is the line? If tracking is done for "professional" reasons does that make it acceptable? If there is money involved or something to be gained does it become legal? Where do we stop and why? The imaginary veil of public safety is a weak excuse and overused. Just because we CAN do a thing does not mean we SHOULD do that thing. With our present way of thinking, anyone who opposes this MUST be doing something wrong so let us all sit back and allow the state to take every freedom we ever had. We have no fight left in us so we deserve no freedom.

[mountainmutt]

I don't see this as a big deal. The police or anybody can track anyone at anytime using old-school techniques such as following them or hiring a private investigator to follow them. Why not a GPS device? It provides the same information. It just does so in a different way. Please stop freaking out over trivialities.

[MarionIN]

True, but it required effort and had to be worth their while. Now, just track anyone, you never know, you might get lucky and catch a guy leaving a bar. If it is no big deal and so easy to track everyone, why do the police need to use the GPS transmitters? Was there a problem with the old school ways? Yeah, they were expensive and now that the price is right they can track everyone...eventually. Probable cause? What is that?

[Rbrown614]

That's a great idea! I say we put a GPS on every police car so we can track where they're at!
No more speeding tickets for me!!!

[willdryden]

If you know what frequency to use, the information is already available. It does take some decription, but most police vehicles are already GPSed so that the officer can be found and aided in an emergency.

This may be the first time this question has come up, specifically, but it was always going to be decided this way. I invite you to read up on United States v. Knotts, 460 US 276 (1983). Any information that could readily be observed without a warrant is not considered a search simply because a piece of technology is used to aid that observation and/or record it accurately. A search is the seeking out of information protected by a reasonable expectation of privacy, and you cannot reasonably expect the location of your car to be private information.

For a contrary ruling, see Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001) (holding that information that could not be seized without a physical invasion, but that is in fact seized through the use of a technology not generally available to the public, constitutes an illegal search and is inadmissible at trial).

[Copter808]

Unfortunately, I believe the Kyllo decision is the reslt of theCourt not understanding the limitations of the TI (Thermal Imaging) technology in use by police agencies. The TI cameras track HEAT only! If one part of your house is extremely warm and his is bleeding through to the outside surface of your house, it will show on the equipment. It will NOT show anyone inside the enclosed building unless maybe a window is open. It will NOT show WHY the room is hot--this needs to be supported by other records. TI technology is much like visual technology (your eyesight for example) just a different frequency.

[Vonny1685]

I don't remember the case name but I think it is United States vs. Karo; which was a SCOTUS decision from 1984 that said police can use tracking devices to follow items that are in vehicles. So in the end this decision is just a natural extension of that decision.

[Perdendosi]

This article contains an error. There is no "Fourth District U.S. Court of Appeals." My guess is that this case was decided by a Wisconsin STATE appellate court (and the appeal will be to the Wisconsin Supreme Court). There are federal courts in Wisconsin, too, but they're called the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin and the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin (trial courts) and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit (appellate court). There's a BIG difference between a state appellate court and a U.S. Court of Appeals. Please make the correction.

[gunchmofo]

This has actually already been decided. I can't remember the name of the case off the top of my head, but it involved an undercover agent placing a tracking device inside a coffee can that was supposed to contain drugs or something to that effect. The Supreme Court (the one that really matters) said that tracking him using it was OK even if he was actually out of police sight, so long as he could have potentially been observed by well camouflaged police officers. However the court found a violation of his rights when the officers tracked him inside a house with the windows closed up where the "drugs" switched hands.

There is also another case where police were able to scrape dirt off of a suspect's tires in a parking lot because it was a public place and didn't involve violating the suspect's privacy in any way. The basic idea is that anyone could have access to the outside of your car when it is in a public place.

Clearly the court of appeals in this situation thought it was a logical extension to combine the two holdings and apply them to tracking a car (since it is almost always in a potentially viewable public place anyways).

This will probably get invalidated once the police track a car-jacker into a large garage on public property and the car is packed into a truck (fast and furious style). The resulting bust would be completely analogous to the "coffee looking like drugs" case and would allow a court to easily invalidate this kind of tracking.

[Vonny1685]

I think the name of the case is U.S. vs. Karo and was decided in 1984.

[honorable1]

This will be ruled unconstitutional. In order to effectuate the tracking, the police must execute a 'trespass' by placing an unauthorized object onto your vehicle. Sure, there's no reason a cop can't follow you around all day, watching what you do but this might lead to a suit for harrasment. So, the gobbament thinks they can have their cake and eat it too, by obviating the need to 'waste' resources (man power) watching the comings and goings of a certain car. This court was stupid in it's decision. Why do cops need a search warrant to obtain the details of an onboard GPS such as a mapping device, or the data from your onboard computer? What's the difference? The fact is that either we are 'secure in our person, and effects (i.e. things)) or we're not. Otherwise, we might as well throw away the fourth amendment. Not like we're using it much these days anyway.

This is a simple property issue. Either your property is yours and secure from tampering (vandalism) and/or theft of service (transportation of a third party device unauthorized by you) or then, by logical extension, whenever a police office decides he needs to watch you closely, you should be forced to ride him.her around all day so they can watch and record your daily movements/habits. The search is obvious - you've got data you couldn't obtain easily without my knowledge (I can see you in my rearview mirror), and you've obtained it by theft of service (hitching a ride on my car). By the way, evidence obtained illegally is deemed "Fruit of the poison tree", which means that that evidence is deemed 'poisonous' and is thrown out of any court proceedings as 'tainted' evidence.

If I'm off base, and these black robed 'kings' want to try and argue their way out of the hole they've dug themselves in, I'm ready for a few laughs. How can they justify GPS tracking, but aren't allowed to order 'On*Star', or 'LOJack' to hand over the details of all their customers' coming and goings, date/time, distance/speed etc. so that they could just automatically issue speeding tickets to those they didn't catch the traditional way?

BTW - Some folks here just don't get it, nor do they deserve the freedoms they're losing :-). The smart ones already have a plan and one foot 'out the door'. The rest of you can bend over and let the cops give you a look-see and/or force you to 'carry' a GPS transceiver, video camera and microphone, since it's "not a search", I'm sure you'll be jumping at the chance to volunteer your private life to the GUbbament. What do you have to hide? LOL.... Meanwhile, us smart ones will laugh at what used to be a great country, but was turned into the world's first modern, third world country, police state - just like 1984 - Socially enginerred, minions, working for the benefit of your masters the "proletariat", all the while smiling happily that you're secure in your endless work cycle subsisting on rice and potatoes not having to worry about thinking, because it's done for you. Welcome to your New World Order - I' m just bursting with enthusiasm for the "CHANGE" you think is for your benefit.

I leave you with this. The easiest way to control a population is to make them think they're free. All you do is call, fascism "freedom" and convince everyone that this "freedom" requires 'sacrifice' for the betterment of 'society'. Then you demonize all that disagree by calling them 'extremists', 'intolerant', 'bigoted', 'religious nuts', 'homophobes', etc...[insert name here]....By this time, everyone (the socially engineered Sheeple) will help Big Brother finalize control over everything by weeding out the outsiders (AKA: Thought Criminals). They will either be 're-edumacated' or 'removed' from society as 'terrorists'. Meanwhile, you'll be watching the public executions as if these people were Taliban militants, because you've been engineered to see them so.

Exciting times are upon us in these last days.

[Copter808]

Hmmm, the "theft of service" concept is interesting. Not sure it holds water, but an interesting concept! The problem might be for you to prove the amount of the "theft"--how much gas was consumed by hauling an extra 1/2 pound or so?

The other records such as Onstar may already be available by subpeona.

[adamkuj]

The court's reasoning seems to be that a GPS attached to the car is just a high-tech way of tailing somebody the old-fashioned way.

If the police choose to tail a person with a squad car, does the "suspect" have to pay for the gasoline used by the squad car? No, or course not, that's preposterous!

What iIf the police decided to tag their car with a GPS, which adds some weight to the car? That weight requires energy to move it, and that energy is provided by the gasoline purchased for the "suspect's" car. Sure, a 1lb GPS logger/transponder doesn't make much of a difference on a 2000lb car. But what police never both to take it off (i.e. it stops working and they loose track of the car, so they can never remove it)? Hauling an extra pound around for a few hundred thousand miles will eventually add up to a measurable amount of cash. If/when the technology gets cheap enough to tag everybody's car, who's going to foot the bill for all the extra energy that is consumed?

Second, say somebody owns a 20,000-acre ranch -- will the GPS automatically shut off as soon as they enter their private property? The old-fashioned way, without a warrant, the police would have to stop following as soon as the "suspect" entered the private party. What right do the police have to know where somebody goes on their private property? The courts shot down the argument that the garage's status of private party made the GPS attachment a "search" -- but a 20,000-acre ranch with multiple buildings, multiple private roads and trails, possibly even multiple residences -- that's a quite different from a two-car garage.

This also opens up questions about jurisdiction. Are the police from one state allowed to surveil suspects when they cross state boundaries? What about national boundaries? I'm pretty sure that the US does not allow Mexican or Canadian police to surveil people freely within our borders, and vice versa. Saying that the GPS technology is analogous to physical surveillance overlooks these legal considerations.

As the technology improves and the cost drops, an important change takes place. One protection against abuse of power (i.e. surveilling everybody all the time) is that it is resource intensive -- from the perspective of the government/police, the benefits outweigh the costs. Those that say that the police would never bother trailing innocent people with this technology are ignoring the fact that as the cost gets lower, it will get used more and more. Heck, the police could have been doing this 20 years ago, but weren't because it was way too expensive back then. It's starting to get cheap, and in another 5-10 years it will be DIRT cheap (i.e. $10 for the GPS hardware, and negligible cost to process and store the electronic data). The police can't possibly track everybody now, but soon technology will make it possible. When the price reaches that point, what reason will the police have to not surveil everybody?

[honorable1]

OK folks, I think you missed the point. I didn't say anythign about the cost of gas to carry around a GPS transceiver. The point was, that in order to effectuate the tracking, the police have to 'trespass' (i.e. touch it, install a device on it, AKA vandalize - that may be a stretch) without your permission. How much do you want to bet that a typical police officer would arrest someone for merely touching a third party's car if they knew that the owner specifically prohibited you from doing so? And what would the charge be: either trespassing or vandalism. This being the likely case, the police have no more authority to do this (without a warrant) than anyone.

[sparrowhyperion]

I can see a new industry forming... Electronic gps detectors... It's starting to look a lot more like Germany in the mid to late thirties; And Canada is beginning to look better every day... And to the dumb@@@ morons who ruled that this is legal.. I say Zeig... Um, err.. Later dude.

[Copter808]

We already have the detectors--for the real-time GPS info to be of any use it needs to be TRANSMITTED viaelectronic means. Simply detect the transmitter!

[Button Boy]

I look at this the same way as warrant-less wiretaps. Last I heard, they were still illegal.

[willdryden]

No they're not. Just ask the NSA. They've been recording all overseas calls in and out of the U. S. since 2002. Patriot Act at work.

[man_w_balls]

To hell with the Police State bull$hit! Concerned citizens should be making moves to counteract each and every one of these infringements of our Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms.
1) Anonymous ISP services to counter warrantless wiretapping - Concerned citizens should band together to start a totally anonymous ISP company, like Sweden or Switzerland has now.
2) Anti-GPS or GPS jamming devices for personal use, to counter the madness brought upon us by this court ruling.
3) Self-sufficiency to limit the money you give to the big corporations that own our government
4) ETC