Posted on 08/29/2010 3:28:46 PM PDT by James C. Bennett
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals just decided that it was legal for the police to put a GPS tracking device on your car, sitting in your driveway, on your property. Here's how to protect yourself.
Matt's post about the decision explains in depth about the ruling. To quickly summarize, the supreme court had said before that police can look through things that anyone in the public could come across, meaning, your driveway is freely accessible to the public, hence, the cops can look through it. The 9th circuit court now says that cops can shove a GPS locator onto your car, because the area is publicly accessible and you have no reasonable expectation of privacy there. Then said cops can use the GPS track you. Without a warrant.
(Updated above text to improve clarity.)
How do you stop this without combing over the underside—or perhaps even inside—of your car and finding the GPS tracker? With technology.
Your first bet is probably to find out if someone is tracking you or not. You can turn here for cellphone and bug device detectors. But these aren't 100%, so if you're really paranoid and want to hide your location, you'll want to just go ahead and stop the trackers anyway.
The first type is a GPS jammer, which is technically illegal to buy and use in the US, so keep that in mind. These types of GPS jammers plug into the cigarette lighter in your car, and will "prohibit GPS signal" up to 10 meters. Ten meters isn't too far, but it isn't super close either, so cars next to you might get some GPS interference as you drive down the road.
This model is $33. There are handheld and higher-powered versions available for slightly more. Our friends at Brando have one too, for $50.
If you're worried that someone is tracking your cellphone, there's a signal blocking bag for about $10 that you can shove your device into when not in use.
You also have the cellphone-type trackers, which need to be stopped with a different device: a cellphone jammer. There are various portable versions, as well as ones that go into your car. These types of jammers are as illegal as the GPS ones, so again, know what you're getting into. Is it worth it to go to the potential legal troubles of owning and operating a GPS or cellphone jammer if you're not doing anything wrong? That's up to you to decide. But if you are doing something that you want to make sure the government doesn't know about and they're already surveilling you, it might already be too late to get one of these. [The Jammer Store] Send an email to Jason Chen, the author of this post, at jchen@gizmodo.com.
Why is it illegal to stop the gov from tracking your location?
Per article, GPS jammers are illegal.
A nation not willing to serve God will become a slave to man.
Today we will discuss the Nanny Function which provides a metric for gauging the speed by which a contemporary computer can track an individual across the face of the planet. The resultant Nanny Speed (N) is the minimum speed, in appropriate units, by which one must continually travel to escape tracking. The independent variables are, a) the computer's computational speed, b) the entire population over which the computer must roam, and c) the resolution on the planet, call it Earth pixel, for the desired accuracy of individual location. The function looks like this:
It is convenient to put (res) in units of feet (ft), and (compspeed) in bits /sec, so that dimensionally N will result in ft/sec, or, multiplying by 0.6, in nm/hr. (nautical miles being used as is always appropriate on the planet's surface).
As an example say a supercomputer moving bits between registers at 1 x 109 bits/sec is roaming over a population of 3 x 108 (three hundred million) individuals who are to be located within a 100' x 100' region on the planet's surface.
Substituting in place then, N = 12 ft/sec or 12 (.6) = 6 nm/hr.
Alternatively if the resolution is reduced to 10' x 10' then N= 1.2 ft/sec or .7 nm/hr.
That is to say if the tracking accuracy is increased the required minimum escape speed is decreased accordingly.
Escaped criminals or fugitives have always had an innate sense of Nanny Speed and its implicit boundaries, Nanny Space. A fugitive constantly gauges his movement for continuous escape and knows the boundaries of confinement. But when the moral roles are reversed and the tracking instruments fall into the hands of the corrupt, and the legitimate become the fugitive, then Leftism, through the Nanny Function, prevails. That is, the Nanny Function says in a sociological sense those with access to the data instruments best be individuals of humble respectful character lest the technology rain oppression on those detached.
In the modern American era when every citizen is intentionally burdened with explicit guilt of some sort, tax evasion, racism, hate crime, sexual thoughts, alcohol possession, drug possession, a sort of orthodox Judaism, the Nanny criteria become relevant across the entire population spectrum. Indeed because of the relative permanence (average speed less than Nanny Speed) of documented legal residence, virtually all legitimate taxpaying citizens become confined to Nanny Space. It is hardly an irony of the perversion of contemporary Leftist Strategy in America that the only human segment free of Nanny Space is the illegal or the fugitive. Thus the legitimate individual becomes a type of serf to the elite barons with access to the instruments of Nanny tracking; unless as stated above those barons assume the humility and faith to respect all legitimate citizens as conscious equals. For convenience in subsequent lectures we will refer to these elitists who aspire to superior position as "Nannies." And the Nannies in America can be identified, named, and isolated, then subsequently classified with respect to their relative humility and faith. We will attempt to do so in subsequent lectures; in the meantime please evaluate the Nanny Function and forward corrections or refinements to the Institute.
The Suntrade Lectures
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Turnabout is fair play. If they can attach devices to our cars under these “public access” rules then we can attach devices to theirs.
We can also confiscate the devices and sell them on eBay. Anything attached to my vehicle is something given to me.
Don’t use a jammer, place a Faraday Cage around the device.
much to the disappointment of some, not even the fbi really gives a crap about you or your location until you act up...
Try shooting a police dog and see what happens.
I think GPS on your car is put on because you are on probation.
I may be wrong.
That would be the same reason used to deny hand guns to citizens while permitting them to Govt thugs.
The video surveillance jambing device has some interesting applications though. Consider for a moment that your occupation is to relieve convenience stores of their excess profits after dark. Akin to what we used to call a midnight requisition. If one had a device in his pocket which would prevent the video recording of an image while on the premises, the art of robbing convenience stores would be elevated to a new level. Do you see where this is going?
What??? Who said anything about shooting a police dog??
You don’t do to the Police. They do to you. It’s strictly one way.
all them brinks armored cars have gps, as well as hazardous chemical carriers.
maybe it aint so nuts to invest in one.
What I have a real problem with here is the courts definition of “public access.”
My driveway is not “public access.” The No Trespassing Sign at the end of the driveway clearly delineates it is private property. The court is horribly wrong.
It will take some cop, detective, or undercover getting their brains blown out to have them revisit the meaning of “public access” vs. “private property.”
Which in some crazy way...I am thinking about this type of ruling and the incident in Alaska involving that guys free speech right at the fair. I mean, c’mon if the public has access...it is a free speech zone under this type of ruling, no?
How long until attending a Tea Party is considered "acting up"?
Especially since we, (taxpayers), own said police cars.
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