Need Warrant Before Attaching GPS Device
Law enforcement officials must obtain a warrant before placing a GPS tracking device on an individual’s vehicle, the United States Supreme Court ruled.
The decision was anticipated to be the first to define boundaries of what constitutes geolocational privacy, that is, whether there is any privacy in the location of a person. However, the case was decided on what constituted a trespass in the 18thcentury.
The Supreme Court case involved law enforcement’s tracking of an individual by placing a GPS device on his car without a valid warrant. The device sent back information on the individual’s location every 10 seconds for 28 days. The issue was whether the installation of the GPS device and the transmitting of information was an unlawful search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment.
Writing for the majority, Justice Scalia found that, rather than being a case involving privacy, the case involved whether the government trespassed by placing the GPS device on the car. He wrote that there was no need to determine whether the defendant had a reasonable expectation of privacy regarding the new technology, but rather the issue was what a search was when the Constitution was adopted. Using that analysis, he found the search to involve an inappropriate trespass.
In a concurring opinion, Justice Sotomayor wrote that the use of a cheap GPS tracking device that produces a “substantial quantum of intimate information about any person whom the Government, in its unfettered discretion, chooses to track—may ‘alter the relationship between citizen and government in a way that is inimical to democratic society.’” She suggested that it might be necessary “to reconsider the premise that an individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy in information voluntarily disclosed to third parties. . . I for one doubt that people would accept without complaint the warrantless disclosure to the Government of a list of every Web site they had visited in the last week, month, or year.”
Justice Alito, writing another concurring opinion, found that the 28 days of constant tracking in the case “involved a degree of intrusion that a reasonable person would not have anticipated.”
United States v. Jones, U. S. Supreme Court, issued January 23, 2012.