GPS on vehicles

I can't agree with this...placing a tracking device on your vehicle (IMHO) is an invasion of your privacy and there needs to be some judicial oversight. Problem is the legislative branch will not set terms and they allow unelected bureaucrats, excuse me, judges to do it.  But with the conflicting rulings this will make it to the Supreme Court in the next year or so.

Va. appeals court upholds tracking suspects with GPS | Washington Examiner

September 8, 2010 Police can use a GPS device to track the movements of a suspect’s vehicle without first obtaining a warrant, the Virginia Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday.


The court held that police did not violate the privacy rights of David L. Foltz, a suspect in a series of sexual assaults, when they placed a GPS on the bumper of his vehicle.


In upholding Foltz’s conviction on charges of abduction with intent to defile, the appeals court weighed in on the hot-button issue of how the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches and seizures regulates police use of technology.


The appeals court said Foltz had no expectation of privacy on a public street....
...Police said the GPS placed Foltz near the scene of a sexual assault and officers began physically following him the next day. ...

...Judge Randolph A. Beales wrote in the opinion that “police used the GPS device to crack this case by tracking the appellant on the public roadways — which they could, of course, do in person any day of the week at any hour without obtaining a warrant.”


The GPS, he wrote, “did not provide a substitute for police behavior that would have otherwise violated a recognized right to privacy.”...

...The privacy issue with such technology is the ease of tracking someone, said Barbara Armacost, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law.


“Police can’t physically track someone for a year, but they could with GPS,” Armacost said.


Federal appeals courts are divided, meaning the issue could head to the Supreme Court.


This year, the Ninth Circuit in California ruled that a GPS device on a vehicle wasn’t a Fourth Amendment violation, but the D.C. Circuit held that it was.