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.

[Twotone]

The ocean is full of critters doing what critters do, along with dying & they think it’s pollution for ashes to go in. We have some very odd people running our gov’t.

[Charles Martel]

There's an economic side of this as well: in some waters, fishing charter operators build their own reefs to attract fish, using crushed car bodies and such. Simple enough reason: ensuring that there were a variety of places to bring their customers, which weren't already fished-out. Back in the pre-smartphone days along the Florida Gulf Coast, the charter captains would warn you against bringing any sort of gps equipment on board.

If the entire world can log in to marinetraffic.com and see every waypoint that a vessel pauses at, with great accuracy - well, why go to all that expense of developing your own fishing grounds?

[RedMonqey]

I have a different take.

As a commercial vehicle it has to comply with lots of regulations a private craft would not be held responsible for.

But on the other hand, as long as the charter boat has working communication gear for emergencies Constant monitoring of it’s location is ridiculous and unnecessary costs burdens on the business.

[Mean Daddy]

With any monitoring system, whether at work or in a car, there’s usually a behavior (looking at porn) or reported incident that will drive investigation into what it was you were doing. With AI, it’ll start looking for patterns. Think Minority Report.

[Boogieman]

Here’s the thing. The government might be able to force you to install a GPS tracker on your boat. But can the government stop you from covering that GPS tracker in a tin foil faraday cage so that it can’t transmit anything???

[metmom]

How convenient for politicians who want to hide what they are doing.

[dangus]

FFS, you don’t collect private information and broadcast it on a public website!

[dangus]

So notice: the regulatory agencies went beyond their statutory authority to crack down on fishing, but not on human or drug trafficking. Interesting to see their priorities.

[ridesthemiles]

IF you have a problem & call ONSTAR for help-—They know to the foot exactly WHERE you are.

[wildcard_redneck]

I think you missed the entire point of the article. Americans shouldn’t have to tell the government where they are at all times. Are we have three people or not?

[Rurudyne]

No, I got that.

But what I proposed offers functionality without using the system that they can track you with without your knowledge in the first place.

[dangus]

OK.. I looked up about OnStar. OnStar DOES track you, specifically because it offers a vehicle-locating function; if someone steals your car, or you seem to have gotten in an accident where you may not be able to initiate contact, or you’re not sure where you are, OnStar can locate your vehicle for you. But OnStar uses cell phones so your car can use GPS to tell OnStar where you are. If the cell towers quit transmitting, OnStar does NOT know where you are. OnStar does not get data from DIRECTLY from any satellite.

[fremont_steve]

The accuracy of such a system is dubious - several degrees of uncertainty to the RF source. Especially if you don’t have line of site to it, i.e. over the horizon.

The system that this is likely discussing is also what commercial shipping, super yachts, and sailing boats use to announce themselves to others in the area. You can go dark - and get run over by the supertanker!

[Rurudyne]

With AM and FM stations you would have numerous data to sample every second, not just one or two, throughout the waters of the US and, unlike with a car or RV, boats travel slow enough when cruising that things would average out. It all comes down to the triangulation algorithms AND them operating over time. The system would not forget every moment before the current data was taken.

As for large ships, required to have radar, they will still have their radar though even if you are dark (small yachts are often “dark” anyway). And your system would indicate their bearing to you and to some degree heading as your system tracks them over time ... kinda like doppler systems.

More to the point, with such a system you can be aware of big boats even when visibility is bad. Something most small yachts do not often have.

Lower draw on house power than active radar too, especially if the app can be running on a tablet or smart phone.

[old curmudgeon]

Has no one here ever head of Loran?

Years ago I had Loran on an airplane. Worked great, but I understand that it has been shut down.

[SuperLuminal]

Just imagine how the governments of those tyrants of the past like FDR, Wilson, Hitler, Mao, and Stalin would have lasted if they had today’s serf-monitoring and thought-control systems...

Ronald Reagan hit the nail on the head when he warned us that inaction would get us a thousand years of the darkest tyranny...

Oh well... It’s best to remain optimistic... Only 998 years to go...

[invoman]

I use GPS to navigate while fishing on some Minnesota lakes.

I suppose they are using my location to find areas where there are no fish?

On the other hand, we were ice fishing Upper Red Lake last weekend...4+ miles out...we stayed overnight in a "sleeper".

My phone has GPS...we stayed for 48 hours.

We caught about 75 crappies, but we could only keep 50.

Included 3 trophy crappies.

[Rurudyne]

Loran was in the ballpark of what I’m talking about. Only rather than use special broadcasting I propose using commercial broadcast radio for local triangulation.