Charter Boat Captains Don't Have To Share Their Location Data With the Government, Court Rules

Reason ^ | March 6, 2023 | Elizabeth Nolan Brown

[Twotone]

Boat-tracking regulation is a warrantless search, court says. Can the government force charter boat captains to continuously transmit their location information to the authorities? It seems preposterous, but the Department of Commerce and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) this privacy-infringing protocol in 2020. The rule required charter-boat captains to install—at their own expense—onboard monitoring systems that regularly relayed their boats' GPS locations to the government.

A group of charter boat captains represented by the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) sued, saying the rule violated rights to due process, privacy, and freedom of movement, among other things.

"The reason we were against this so much is it tracked us precisely where we were going," Allen Walburn, one of the boat captains who brought the suit, told the Fort Myers Beach Observer and Beach Bulletin.

Another reason: The monitoring systems can be expensive, costing thousands of dollars to install in addition to a monthly service charge.

Now a federal court has sided with the captains.

"The asserted benefits from the GPS-tracking requirement do not bear any reasonable relationship to the undisputed costs," the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Louisiana held in its recent decision:

The Final Rule found that installation of a [monitoring] device would cost $3,000, with an additional $40 to $75 per month in service fees. These are significant fees for charter-boat owners, for they primarily operate small businesses, with roughly $26,000 per year in net income. And in addition to the financial cost, of course, the regulation imposes a massive privacy cost; demanding that charter-boat owners transmit their exact location to the Government, every hour of every day forever, regardless of why they are using the vessel.

[C210N]

If charter boat captains would just share this info with the government, we would have never have had the saga of the “Three Hour Cruise”.

[Twotone]

My sweetie wanted his ashes to be tossed on the sea. I was amazed to learn the charter boats are required to file a report with where the ashes go in. Ridiculous.

[moovova]

You were quick with that. Congrats!

[ZOOKER]

Interesting. I hope the charter boat operators win - not because I own a boat, but because I resent the attack on privacy.

Doesn't OnStar pretty much perform the same function in your car - pinpoint your location every minute? How about your cell phone?

This case goes beyond boats and private fishing spots.

[Rurudyne]

GPS without GPS may be doable with a boat because digital navigation charts are available and more reliable than those for roads.

Rather than GPS use radio detection gear to find bearing to local AM and FM radio stations whose broadcasting towers are all known locations. The computational power in any current computer would be more than enough to crunch the numbers and then show location on digital charts.

As a bonus the system would probably allow fantastic radio reception for entertainment and could also be used to locate and track ships emitting radar signals, giving the boat radar of a sort without being an emitter of radio signals itself.

[llevrok]

Boat-tracking regulation is a warrantless search, court says.

By the associative law of algebra, this should apply to land vehicles too?

[Mogger]

If they want to transmit their location just for their own use, safety, etc., a crew member can become a ham radio operator and do it for almost free.

The cost being equipment, which can be for under $500.

It will work if there are ham radio APRS repeaters where they go.

Search for APRS and you will find a LOT of boats and ships around the world using this.

If there aren't repeaters where they are, for again, under $500 they can add their own if they want.

[sit-rep]

Welp I guess Gilligan’s island story may happen again then!!

[sit-rep]

As far as I know, Navionics does not log your data unless you tell it to...

[ChildOfThe60s]

Logically that would be the case

However the court appears to indicate that the cost of the tracking has a bearing on whether or not it’s constitutional for some bizarre reason. If it’s cheap enough it’s not a warrantless search, if it’s very expensive and a hardship then it becomes a warrantless search.

I’ve been watching this for years with the court system, as if constitutionality is determined by cost or the hardship of one of the parties involved.

[dangus]

There are two sides to this issue. The federal government has a legitimate need to patrol its borders against drug and human trafficking and customs evasion. An alternative? Free reign within the territorial sea (that is, up to 12 miles) but aggressive enforcement within the exclusive economic zone.

[Nervous Tick]

>> Doesn’t OnStar pretty much perform the same function in your car - pinpoint your location every minute? How about your cell phone?

Yeah, but those don’t go straight to the government.

Yeah, I know, I’m being naive.

[dangus]

Seeing mainstream-media coverage of this, it seems the main issue was not a constitutional claim but rather an assertion of regulatory over-reach: Congress never required such monitoring.

[dangus]

I’m not sure about OnStar, but satellite tracking does not mean the satellites know where you are. You’re determining your location by identifying where satellites are relative to you. Gmaps, OTOH, must know where you are to feed you the correct traffic info, etc.

[Twotone]

Whatever ‘good’ may be served by such rules, our government is not trustworthy under any circumstances. All surveillance of any kind must be blocked.

[Twotone]

It should apply to everything that’s trackable. The gov’t should have to get a warrant before tracking anyone for any reason. Everyone who got railroaded in the J6 roundup should be an example of what an out-of-control gov’t does with such information.

[Abathar]

If you have an Android I recommend downloading this app and playing with it, kind interesting the detail given for almost every single boat on the oceans.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.astrapaging.vff

[packagingguy]

The ashes go into the ocean. The government can’t figure that one out?

[dangus]

>> By the associative law of algebra, this should apply to land vehicles too? <<

No. The argument used is that a road is owned by the government. It’s a little more complicated than commonly taught if you ask me: common law, which is recognized as the default law by the U.S. Supreme Court, permits free passage through property as long as that passage does not decrease the intended benefits of property ownership. For instance, beaches are public property. You can’t functionally own a beach by buying up the shore property and keeping everyone out. On the other hand, if you buy a beautiful waterfall or vista or whatever, you have exclusive rights to that waterfall; people traipsing across your land to get to that waterfall are depriving you of the benefit of private ownership of that waterfall.

So what about the car owner who claims that they’re not using the road for its own sake, but merely that the road now constitutes the only path, developed or not, between someone’s home and where they want to go? Do they really have a compelling interest in preventing you from riding an ATV alongside the road? They could allege that you POTENTIALLY could reduce the safety of those on the roads, or at least the intersections you cross, but can they really prove that you, individually, pose a threat to their interests?