[Peace-discuss] Fw: [police oversight] GPS Monitoring of Vehicles Requires Search Warrants: Supreme Court

[Laurie Solomon]

Most interesting decision by a right wind court.

From: kwa357 
Sent: January 23, 2012 10:22 AM
To: policeoversight at yahoogroups.com 
Subject: [police oversight] GPS Monitoring of Vehicles Requires Search Warrants: Supreme Court

  
GPS Monitoring of Vehicles Requires Search Warrants: Supreme Court
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Federal agents' installations of Global-Positioning-System (GPS)
tracking devices on criminal suspects' vehicles are searches under the
Constitution's Fourth Amendment, the Supreme Court ruled today in an
opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia. The ruling, a defeat for the U.S.
Justice Department, means that law enforcement authorities must get
search warrants from courts to attach GPS devices in investigations. The
decision upheld a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington,
D.C., that overturned the conviction of a nightclub owner in a drug
trafficking case. A trial judge had ruled that data from the device
could be used in court because the suspect had no expectation of privacy
when the vehicle was on public streets.

The court was unanimous in reaching its result, but Justice Samuel Alito
wrote for four Justices that he was agreeing with the result only
because the GPS surveillance was so long in this case, 28 days. Given
that the state of the law on GPS tracking is so uncertain, Alito said,
courts must ask "whether the use of GPS tracking in a particular case
involved a degree of intrusion that a reasonable person would not have
anticipated." In the Washington, D.C., case at issue, he said, the GPS
monitoring was long enough that it constituted a search.

U.S. Supreme Court
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pXDCRmIAuCRrl> 

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