Upcoming SC case, thoughts?

Cooper81

Reading an article this morning abou the upcoming cases for the Supreme Court. I thought this was interesting, I have a skewed view, but was wondering what others thought:

ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE: U.S. v. Jones

AT ISSUE: Whether the government violated a drug suspect's Fourth Amendment rights by installing a GPS tracking device on his motor vehicle without a valid search warrant and without his consent. Is movement in a private vehicle on city streets "public" in nature?

THE CASE: The devices send an electronic signal to a satellite, allowing real-time plotting of someone's whereabouts. Jones was suspected of trafficking cocaine, and FBI agents covertly attached a GPS device to his Jeep without first obtaining a search warrant. He was eventually tracked to suburban Maryland, where law enforcement discovered nearly 100 kilograms of the illegal narcotic, along with about $850,000 in cash. He was sentenced to life in prison.

THE ARGUMENTS: Jones calls his surveillance "Big Brother" intrusion, going far beyond traditional stakeouts and tailing of cars by police. The Justice Department cites a 1983 high court ruling allowing police to place an electronic beeper on a car without a warrant. That device, however, could be tracked only from a short distance. The justices ruled in 2001 that police needed a warrant before using thermal imaging technology to see whether anyone was inside a home.

THE IMPACT: This is perhaps the most important search and seizure case at the high court in a decade. Growing sophistication of electronic devices to monitor the movements of suspects makes this issue ripe for review, since lower courts have disagreed on when such surveillance is permissible. While this case deals with public areas like roads, sophisticated electronic surveillance in the home may again be the next legal frontier for the Supreme Court.

mrsbecky07

At first glance my tendency is to say that it seems that the prior ruling in 1983 paves the way for this, although obviously with technological advances it's a different situation.

I get that this seems to be a bit more, um, "icky" than tailing someone or the like, but the idea appears to be the same.

Oh wait for some reason it just clicked in my mind that it was warrantless.  Well the 1983 case still seems like it would allow that (without having read it) but I'm not really a fan of searches without a warrant anyway.

But again........we have speed cameras, red light cameras, all that kind of stuff, that captures your actions on a public roadway in your private vehicle and I guess the idea is that you are consenting to that by driving.  But the idea that by driving means the police could be a GPS on my car makes me feel....just....icky.

So basically - no idea how I feel.  All over the place. ha.

I do think this would be a much more interesting case had it NOT been successful as a tactic, because as humans I think we often are able to let the ends justify the  means in a lot of situations.

Ragdolls

Technology makes for a slippery slope as far as what's "public" in nature.  We studied a similar thermal imaging case in criminal evidence back in law school - the idea being that even if the thermal imaging is "publicly viewable" (i.e., one could argue that you put that sort of information out there and don't have 4th amendment protection of it similar to your not having 4th amendment protection over the sound of your voice or the color of your car) at a certain point, with a certain level of necessary technology to get from "unseen" to "publicly visible", you lose the argument against needing a warrant.

If I was answering a law school exam, I'd still make the argument against needing a warrant here since it's a much easier argument to make.  Location of your car is publicly visible at any time in a way that thermal imaging results are not - you don't need technology to get from point A to point B - the technology just adds a level of convenience to collecting the data.  If the location of your car isn't protected by the 4th amendment on it's face, it shouldn't gain protection only because the government is getting continuous information from a convenient electronic source.  If the accused has his own GPS, or, say, an iPhone/iPad with tracking technology, the argument against requiring a warrant just becomes that much weaker since it would show that he wasn't interested in protecting against other third parties' collecting the same data. [[ETA, the fact that a large portion of the population has devices like this alone bolsters the argument that the "reasonable" person doesn't necessarily see this sort of info as private - regardless of whether the accused himself or herself had it.  And that idea is a nice segue into why I think, from a public policy perspective and as a society, we might want to rethink how "nonchalant" we are about this sort of technology.]]

All that being said, at a certain point, from a policy standpoint, I think it's worth making the more difficult argument for requiring a warrant.  Sure unprotected information doesn't suddenly get 4th amendment protection because it's easier to collect - e.g., a fingerprint database doesn't suddenly render our fingerprints 4th amendment protected just because it's readily searchable.  But at a certain point ease of observation becomes threatening enough - from a policy standpoint - to warrant revisiting the question.

KathrynMD

I don't have a terribly well thought out opinion, but I don't like it.

Are we just going to tag any car that belongs to anyone suspected of any crime?