Posted on 10/10/2010 4:09:29 AM PDT by Erik Latranyi
A 20-year-old college student in California said he was shocked to discover he has been followed by the FBI when earlier this week he found a GPS tracker placed underneath his car.
Yasir Afifi, a half-Egyptian, half-American Muslim and U.S. citizen, said he was having the oil changed on his car last Sunday at a Santa Clara, Calif., auto shop when he noticed a wire and the black device underneath the automobile as it was being raised.
"I was born here in Santa Clara, I just turned 20 last August. I'm a sales manager, we sell laptops and I'm a full-time student," Afifi told ABC News station KGO-TV in San Francisco.
Afifi, the son of a prominent Muslim community leader who travels frequently to Egypt and the Middle East, said he took apart the GPS device, which was stuck underneath the belly of the car with a magnet, and showed it his friend.
The friend photographed the device and posted images of it on Reddit.com, a user-generated news site, asking if it meant that the government was following them, Afifi said.
A reader of that website responded that the device is an Orion Guardian ST820 tracking device, which is only sold to authorities, Afifi's lawyer said.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
I would have had a little fun with it myself.
Within three years....a dozen cops and FBI guys will have found GPS tracking devices under their own cars. They will be on the receiving end of this entire game. By 2020, parents will be routinely putting GPS devices on their teenagers vehicles. Guys will be tracking their wives and girlfriends...bosses will be tracking their secretaries. We’d better all get used to a different kind of privacy in the future.
That truly is GWB’S fault. Any thing you name the patriot act is sure to be abused. Compasionate conservatives and neocons cheered the loss of our liberty. Unlimitedpolice power.
My knee jerk reaction is to scream out for individual American citizens against unwarranted government intrusion.
But then, how many homegrown terrorists does it take before this sort of thing is justified?
I hope there is more to this story than meets the eye.
Individual freedom is on very tenuous grounds these days.
And the true-blue lefties whined about it at ear splitting levels until the Bummer regime... now it’s crickets although the very same thing is happening.
Maybe the Feebs really don’t care so much where the car went as about how long it takes for the trackee to notice the device and discard it. Savvier potential terrorists spell more trouble than dumber ones.
The kid’s a Muslim; his daddy is a Muslim with ties to the Middle East; why am I having trouble feeling compassion for him?
There are not so many that getting a warrant to track them is an obstacle.
In previous cases in was decided that one’s driveway is public parking.
It’s not a matter of if, but when, the Tea Partiers are tracked in the same manner.
And if this person is indeed some sort of domestic terrorist, then why is the FBI wasting time and resources putting a tracking device on the car when it should be arresting and interviewing this person instead? I would imagine that a terrorist who doesn't want to be captured prior to engaging in his or her attack would most likely not be driving a personally-owned vehicle if it is known that the government tracks them.
Though a law abiding citizen, I fear the cops and our gub mint much more than I fear the criminals at this point.
There ain't no point defending society when society won't defend your rights.
Look, my dad was an Italian national here in the States when Italy, with Germany, declared war on the United States.
He got a visit from the FBI. He was told to surrender any camera equipment and any radios to them. He was never bitter about that, and, instead, fully understood why the FBI had to confiscate his stuff. He never complained, and the only reason we knew about it was that we asked him what it was like being an Italian national in a country that was at war with Italy.
THIS IS WAR! The Mohammedans want the KILL US AND ENSLAVE US AND RAPE OUR WOMEN! Until the Mohammedans are VANQUISHED and turned back to the 3rd world squalor to which they are condemned by their own stupid ideology, let the spooks spy on them at will.
The courts have not respected private property rights for some time now.
If they have the freedom to do this now, then they will start doing it for political reasons eventually. They can claim “National Security” on every one of us who belongs to the Tea Party as well. That is because the clause covers a broad definition of who THEY believe might be a threat. There is no governing authorization holding them accountable for who they classify as a threat.
This is DANGEROUS ground we are allowing them to walk all over and they must be stopped and held accountable for repeatedly violating the Constitution.
Typical government operation; effed up, expensive and ultimately a failure.
Wouldn’t it have just been cheaper to tell the guy he is the 1 millionth customer of XYZ wireless and has won a free cell phone with two years of free service (with GPS enabled, lol).
Why don't you educate yourself first?
The ruling that allowed authorities to place tracking devices on cars derived from a Drug Enforcement Administration action.....it had nothing to do with terrorism or the Patriot Act.
The Ninth Circus ruled that your driveway is public property and you have no right to privacy when your car is parked in public.
This is being appealed and will end up before the SCOTUS.
Agreed even though that would not be insurance against abuse. Judges could simply rubber stamp warrants in the way that they rubber stamp orders for protection. I'm not sure the judiciary serves much of a protective role if they are in the pocket of the government to being with.
I think I'm with Joe on this one. I trust the criminals more than I trust the government although it becomes even more confusing when the criminals are the government.
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