GPS Surveillance without a Warrant: United States v. Antoine Jones

I was talking about this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LoJack

 

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It's the same as the difference between the police following me around vs. the police hiding in the trunk of my car. Or do you not see a difference there either?

Please. I'll bet you any amount of money that the device was NOT configured to stop transmitting information if/when the car passed onto private property.

 

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Even in public places (like streets and highways)?

Doesn't that sentiment apply just as well to police following a car in a vehicle (car, plane, helicopter, drone, whatever) of their own?

Exactly what is the expectation of privacy as it applies to one's location and movements in and around public spaces?

Okay - what are the salient ones, and why? Cost? Likelihood of being noticed by the target? I'm unclear on where we can find a qualitative difference, rather than merely quantitative ones pertaining to how many cars can be affordably tracked and for how long.

Okay, but how exactly? Other than the need to physically plant a transmitter on the car. Suppose the cops could do this via some sophisticated system of traffic cameras, surveillance helicopters, satellites, monitoring of cell-phone signals, etc. without the requirement of planting a transmitter. Where can we find the bright red line separating this practice from simply following a car around public streets?

 

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In the case that a transmitter is planted on the car, I agree. But this kind of thing can be done without much extra trouble without the transmitter. That was the larger case I was trying to address there.

Sure, but I'll bet you any amount of money that none of the cars in question did anything on private property besides shortly come to a stop, sit parked for a while, and then return immediately to public streets. I.e., even if you configured these systems to switch off while on private property, it wouldn't materially impact the surveillance. The cops would still know exactly where the car was at all times. Unless you're talking about somebody who spends time on some vast private farm with a road network, it doesn't make any practical difference. In order to make any real difference, we need arguments that apply to cars driving around on public roads.

 

Cell phone triangulation does not depend on you actually talking into the phone. Just having the call established and connected is all that's needed.

They would have to obtain an actual warrant to get the data from LoJack or whatever company, AFAIK.

 

I wonder how well it would go over if I secretly planted GPS tracking devices on police cars and set up a website where the locations were displayed in real time? After all, the police don't have any expectation of privacy in public places, right?

What if instead of GPS trackers, I just hired one guy for every police office on duty to follow them around and constantly update the location to the website?

 

This would all work out real great if on-duty police officers were subject to the same rights and privileges as ordinary citizens. But they are not. I'm sure there's a variety of laws empowering and protecting law enforcement that you'd run afoul of.

 

http://communications-media.lawyers.com/privacy-law/Cell-Phone-Privacy.html

The NSA, the same people who wanted to datamine every freaking phonecall.

 

To be fair, more responsibility too.

A LEO is required to respond to a disturbance of the peace. Not on the job, period.
You go down to the Stop'n Rob in your fuzzy PJ's for a candy bar, get there, find that someone is robbing the Stop 'n Rob, and you jolly well have to respond.
This does not mean that a lot of individual officers don't abuse their authority. They sure do.
It also does not mean that the conservative types who are all that's left after a jury has been seated in this country are not going to give a cop more credibility than the person they are testifying against.

Personally, I have no objection to the idea that beat officers should always be recording vid on themselves during official duties. We pay for them, we should be able to see what they do, right? ( I think the same should be applied to senators and congresspeople...

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Scanners . Lots of criminally minded people have police scanners . So go get a scanner and you can track em . You get the dispatch calls as the coppers get em . Unless they are not using radios in area anymore ?

We have been had . They know what we are doing . I still can't get over that google add in Chicago I think it was were I.R.S. ran and add and it zoomed in on a guys house and called him by name saying " We know were you live pay your taxes our we will come get you . Anybody see that add ?
Maybe it was a joke or fictional skit . It looked real .

Cameras at intersections . Caught on film doing California stops . Don't you get a ticket in the mail now a days in California ? We been had . We did it to our selves . We are naked

 

im assuming you only mean uniformed officers but even if you do what about the right to privacy of the people they are dealing with? Cops don't only deal with criminals after all, they deal with victims, the relatives and friends of those who have died, patients with mental illness. I think most cops WISH there job was just chasing bad guys but its simply not true, they spend most of there time working with other agencies especially the ambos in social areas than they do chasing some person who nicked something from a store and these people deserve to have there privacy respected. Would you agree to having cameras on the patients inside an ambulance?

And then of course there are the cops who would die if there targets found out they had that sort of monitoring equipment on them, there lives literally are on the line

 

Using existing GPS tracking data like your own cell phone or your GPS navigation system in your car with a warrant YES.

Installing a GPS tracking system in your car with wiretapping type warrant YES.

Installing a GPS tracking system in your car to follow you without a wiretapping type warrant, or any warrant at all NO.

 

It's not for purposes of catching the bad guys as much as making sure the cops themselves are acquitting themselves as they ought...although you have a good point about not releasing the vid to the general public.

Neutral third party-citizen's review board, then.

I see that some officers abuse their authority. There isn't a good recognition that police officers who do this make the jobs of all of them harder and more dangerous. I don't quite know what to do about that.

At any rate, I still object to them being able to track us with no warrant, and I think the NSA being able to get those records without a warrant's more than a bit ominous.

As far as being able to track police officers, that really would totally ruin their effectiveness, so I have to assume y'all are being facetious.

 

I suspect that within the next 5 years new cars will come with a cellular and/or wireless network device installed on them. This will be a moot point. Consumers will voluntarily pay for this "service".

 

@ Fraggle:

Look where England's going:
http://jalopnik.com/5520622/never-mind-the-sputniks-england-testing-satellite-speed-cameras

 

It doesn't matter how much technology you invest in, at the end of the day, you still need good ole manpower to make the difference

 

What bad could come out of GPS device planting cars without a warrant for law-abiding citizens? If there is any, how does that outweigh the crime-fighting benefit?

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...gps-tracking/2012/01/23/gIQAx7qGLQ_story.html