GPS Tracking Needs Warrant In Real Life
I know I don’t usually talk about criminal procedure here in The Write Report. My forte is civil law, not criminal. But a recent Supreme Court case put the kibosh on a very common plot device, so I wanted to alert you to it.
You see it all the time on TV. The cops put a tracking device under the fender of the suspect’s car. Let’s follow him from a safe distance, or let’s watch where he goes, they say. Well, unless they had a warrant, that tracking information is illegal, and everything they got from it will likely be excluded.
The police put a GPS device on a suspected drug dealer’s Jeep and monitored him for 28 days. The Court said this violated his 4th Amendment rights. “We hold that . . . read more in The Write Report.
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Litopia is the winner
What if the GPS is factory installed?
Many new vehicles have GPS and I wonder how much co-operation the GPS monitoring centers give to police queries.
In respect to this ruling, it's a specific situation. In actual fact, a warrent was issued allowing the installation of the GPS device but the installation was a day late and a few miles outside the range specified in the warrant.
How easy/hard would it be for police/etc. to tap into the GPS registration databases? One copy of the database gives them all they need to monitor any GPS device that is transmitting.
Smiles
Bob