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Monday, January 23, 2012

I agree with the man is some points and disagree in others.

From USA Today, a surprisingly good article on the GPS tracking case.

Supreme Court rules warrant needed for GPS tracking

The opinion was unanimous, although the justices split in their views of how the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures applies to such high-tech tracking...

...The court reversed the cocaine-trafficking conviction of a Washington, D.C., nightclub owner. In 2005, police secretly attached a GPS device to a Jeep owned by Antoine Jones while it was parked in a public lot. Agents then used evidence of Jones' travels over four weeks to help win the conviction on conspiracy to distribute cocaine.

"The government's physical intrusion on the Jeep for the purpose of obtaining information constitutes a search," Justice Antonin Scalia said for the court as he read portions of his opinion from the bench Monday.

Scalia based his decision on the roots of the Fourth Amendment and wrote, "Where, as here, the government obtains information by physically intruding on a constitutionally protected area, such a search has undoubtedly occurred." He was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor.

The four other justices, led by Samuel Alito, concurred only in the judgment for Jones. Alito said the case would be better analyzed by asking whether Jones' "reasonable expectations of privacy were violated by the long-term monitoring of the movements of the vehicle he drove."
Alito contended the attachment of the GPS device was not itself an illegal "search." Rather, he argued, what matters is a driver's expectation of privacy.

"We need not identify with precision the point at which the tracking of this vehicle became a search, for the line was surely crossed before the 4-week mark," Alito wrote, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan.

Sotomayor, who fully joined Scalia's opinion, suggested in a separate concurring statement that she agreed with parts of Alito's analysis, which would cover privacy expectations not only when police affix a device but when there's no physical invasion. That could cover when police access signals from a GPS-enabled smartphone.

The Justice Department had argued that drivers do not expect their movements on public streets to be kept private, no matter the duration, so GPS tracking should not fall under the Fourth Amendment protections regarding searches and seizures...

I am more of the mine of the Chief Justice. I agree that is a suspect is being tracked by GPS for a month there is a need for judicial oversight, i.e. a warrant. I just don't agree The Constitution says that. It is not in there. I believe the legislatures should write law on this matter and have it signed by the governors. Something reasonable would be a GPS of less than 48 hours is OK without a warrant, more than 48 hours would require it.

Gotta see how this plays out but it shows a problem with the way we are being governed. The elected branches are deferring their duties to the courts and this has led to major abuses of the Constitution. The greatest one of recent memory is when a federal judge ordered a city to raise taxes to pay for schools. If Obamacare is held Constitutional the document is worthless. And God help us all.

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