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Posted on 01/23/2012 9:47:35 AM PST by Recovering_Democrat
In a case that stemmed from an investigation by D.C. police and the FBI of a local drug dealer, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously today that police across the country need a warrant if they want to track suspects using GPS monitors.
In the ruling, which was written by Justice Antonin Scalia, the court found that even though the case involved a GPS unit that was attached to a car that was out in the open, it still constituted a "search" under the language of the Fourth Amendment:
It is important to be clear about what occurred in this case: The Government physically occupied private property for the purpose of obtaining information. We have no doubt that such a physical intrusion would have been considered a “search” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment when it was adopted. The case grew out of a 2005-2005 investigation into Antoine Jones, a D.C. club owner who was suspected of drug trafficking. As part of the investigation, police were given the green light to place a GPS tracker on Jones' car within 10 days and inside city limits. The GPS tracker was placed outside of the city and the time-limit allowed by the warrant, but Jones was still arrested after he led police to a Maryland stash house in which they found cocaine, crack and $850,000 in cash. Jones was later convicted for conspiracy to distribute illegal drugs.
Jones appealed the conviction, saying that the use of GPS on his car violated his Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure. On August 6, 2010, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed with him, overturning his conviction. Beyond the issue of the GPS being placed on Jones' car outside of the scope of the warrant, the court found that "prolonged GPS monitoring reveals an intimate picture of the subject's life that he expects no one to have --short perhaps of his spouse."
In today's decision, the Supreme Court sustained the lower court's opinion.
In a concurring opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote: "The Government usurped Jones’ property for the purpose of conducting surveillance on him, thereby invading privacy interests long afforded, and undoubtedly entitled to, Fourth Amendment protection."
In his own concurring opinion, Justice Samuel Alito said that while short-term searches may be permissible, the extent of the GPS monitoring Jones was subjected to made it qualify as a search:
[T]he use of longer term GPS monitoring in investigations of most offenses impinges on expectations of privacy. For such offenses, society’s expectation has been that law enforcement agents and others would not—and indeed, in the main, simply could not—secretly monitor and catalogue every single movement of an individual’s car for a very long period. In this case, for four weeks, law enforcement agents tracked every movement that respondent made in the vehicle he was driving. We need not identify with precision the point at which the tracking of this vehicle became a search, for the line was surely crossed before the 4-week mark. It goes without saying that this case would never have come to be had the GPS tracker been placed on Jones' car a day earlier and within city limits.
Yall git watch'a deserve, given the 'rat leanings.
Welcome to the 1st Amendment.
You need some surplus military overhead cammo nets.
You could fertilize a “FUBO” in the yard.
“I was amazed because the students’ actions were pretty outrageous.”
Yes they were. And outrageous speech is protected.
The SC was correct in this instance also.
Not really. More a difference of degree.
Is that Class Action is the air?
Yeah. It's actually very surprising just how rarely officer reports jive.
These warrants aren't hard to get, but it will require more work for investigators who have gotten accustomed to throwing a tracker on anything.
This also should void the 9th Circuit decision that allowed some DEA agents to place a tracker on a vehicle while it was in the target's driveway. I don't know what they were thinking.
The visible spectrum is considered open field.
The visible spectrum is considered open field.
Hey, even that's progress. His opinions often boil down to "But what if the po-po don't WANT to do...this or that?"
I'd have no problem in the principal or teacher in question followed up with a libel suit. But as an individual action, not punishment from the school if didn't happen on school grounds or using school resources.
Of course, given the stories we see here posted pretty much daily, perhaps he or she really is a sex pervert...
How do you figure? The lower level appeals court also found it unconstitutional, SCOTUS affirmed that decision. It wasn't the drug dealer taking this case there, it was prosecutors hoping to have the lower court ruling overturned. So it would be more correct to say they "took it all the way to SCOTUS and the correct decision survived".
>>How do you figure? The lower level appeals court also found it unconstitutional, SCOTUS affirmed that decision. It wasn’t the drug dealer taking this case there, it was prosecutors hoping to have the lower court ruling overturned. So it would be more correct to say they “took it all the way to SCOTUS and the correct decision survived”.
My point was that it never should have even been an issue; of course it is unconstitutional - anyone with half a brain could tell that; but yet we still have a govt (prosecutors in this case), that are hell-bent on increasing the unlimited power of the police state. The police never should have even considered doing this (warrant-less GPS tracking), and it shouldn’t have had to been appealed all the way to the SC to get a final ruling.
LOL, sounds good!
No, it’s more than a difference of degree. The Constitutional protections which are imposed on the Federal government don’t apply to private businesses at all. So, there are not really any civil liberties issues when it comes to private companies doing these things.
FReepmail me to subscribe to or unsubscribe from the SCOTUS ping list.
Well, we’re definitely in agreement about that.
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