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

[Carl G. Estabrook]

Scalia is the one SC justice who has spoken unequivocally against some  
of the Bush-Obama adminstratons' massively unconstitutional acts, from  
the suspension of habeas corpus to murder.

In his dissent in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, he wrote "The very core of  
liberty secured by our Anglo-Saxon system of separated powers has been  
freedom from indefinite imprisonment at the will of the Executive" -  
directly counter to Obama's pretensions & the NDAA.

The whole dissent is worth reading <http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=000&invol=03-6696&friend#dissent1 
 >.

It gives the lie to the argument that Obama must be kept in office  
because of the Supreme Court justices he might appoint.  --CGE


On Jan 23, 2012, at 10:48 AM, Laurie Solomon wrote:

> 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...
>
>