Supreme Court to hear GPS surveillance case
By: Emily Babay 11/06/11 Washington Examiner Staff Writer
It sounds a bit like Big Brother: Police can place a GPS device on your car to follow all of your movements, for any length of time.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday is scheduled to hear arguments about whether investigators need to get a warrant before doing so.
Legal experts say the case, which stems from a D.C. nightclub owner's conviction on drug charges, is one of the most important Fourth Amendment cases in decades, and will determine how police conduct investigations and privacy in the high-tech age.
That's why the Supreme Court's eventual decision in the GPS case could have far-reaching implications for privacy rights, said John Whitehead, a constitutional lawyer and president of the Charlottesville-based Rutherford Institute. In an amicus brief arguing that a warrant should be required for most GPS surveillance, the institute points to microelectromechanical sensors, Radio Frequency Identification chips, tracking chips in cell phones, facial-recognition software and iris scanners as other tools where security and privacy rights can be at odds.
"Waiting until this sort of surveillance technology is in use everywhere before setting limits on its use by police is imprudent," the brief says.
"No one believes that GPS surveillance by law enforcement is inappropriate," said John Verdi, senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "The question is: What is the standard that law enforcement will be held to? Is law enforcement simply permitted to track anyone, at any time, for no reason?"
The nightclub owner, Antoine Jones, was arrested on Oct. 24, 2005 on cocaine-distribution charges after police used a GPS device to track his vehicle for a month. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. D.C. police initially obtained a warrant for the GPS, but it expired. Now the government now argues it never needed one.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit disagreed last year, holding that the extended GPS use violated Jones' "reasonable expectation" of privacy.
The court wrote that "prolonged GPS monitoring reveals an intimate picture of the subject's life that he expects no one to have -- short of perhaps his spouse."
Federal prosecutors contend that no warrant was necessary because Jones was freely traveling on public roads.
In a brief, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. told the Supreme Court that "any individual who moves on public roadways knows that his movements can be readily observed."
Verrilli also noted that "no evidence exists of widespread, suspicionless GPS monitoring, and practical considerations make that possibility remote."
Two other federal appeals courts have held that police don't need a warrant to install and monitor a GPS on a suspect's vehicle...
...The last time the Supreme Court took up a case involving Fourth Amendment searches, technology and travel was 1983, when the court held in United States v. Knotts that police could, without a warrant, use a beeper device to monitor suspects and people did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy while traveling on public streets....
Now looking at the case I am of the mind an immediate GPS track could be done without a warrant but something lasting more than a set time (e.g. two days) should require a court order. However, this should not be set by a court.
The Founding Fathers could have never conceived of a GPS tracker and therefore the Constitution has no relation to it. This is a policy that should be set by legislative action, not judicial fiat.
Onto something completely different. A definite good day for the 1st Amendment on this one.
Judge blocks graphic images on cigarette packages
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A judge on Monday blocked a federal requirement that would have begun forcing tobacco companies next year to put graphic images including dead and diseased smokers on their cigarette packages.
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled that it's likely the cigarette makers will succeed in a lawsuit to block the new standard. He stopped the requirement until after the lawsuit is resolved, which could take years.
A similar case brought by the tobacco companies against the labels is pending before the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati...
...Leon found the nine graphic images approved by the Food and Drug Administration in June go beyond conveying the facts about the health risks of smoking or go beyond that into advocacy - a critical distinction in a case over free speech.
The packaging would have included color images of a man exhaling cigarette smoke through a tracheotomy hole in his throat; a plume of cigarette smoke enveloping an infant receiving a mother's kiss; a pair of diseased lungs next to a pair of healthy lungs; a diseased mouth afflicted with what appears to be cancerous lesions; a man breathing into an oxygen mask; a cadaver on a table with post-autopsy chest staples; a woman weeping; a premature baby in an incubator; and a man wearing a T-shirt that features a "No Smoking" symbol and the words "I Quit"
"It is abundantly clear from viewing these images that the emotional response they were crafted to induce is calculated to provoke the viewer to quit, or never to start smoking - an objective wholly apart from disseminating purely factual and uncontroversial information," Leon wrote in his 29-page opinion. He pointed out that at least some were altered photographs to evoke emotion.
The judge also pointed out the size of the labels suggests they are unconstitutional - the FDA requirement said the labels were to cover the entire top half of cigarette packs, front and back and include a number for a stop-smoking hotline. The labels were to constitute 20 percent of cigarette advertising, and marketers were to rotate use of the images. Leon said the labels would amount to a "mini-billboard" for the agency's "obvious anti-smoking agenda."
The Justice Department argued that the images, coupled with written warnings, were designed to communicate the dangers to youngsters and adults.
Maybe you should argue the law is within the constraints of the Bill of Rights. But we are talking the Obama regime and the Constitution is something that needs to be worked around or ignored.
Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, urged the Obama administration to appeal the ruling that he said "is wrong on the science and wrong on the law." He said a delay would only serve the financial interests of tobacco companies that spend billions to downplay the health risks of smoking and glamorize tobacco use.
"Studies around the world and evidence presented to the FDA have repeatedly shown that large, graphic warnings, like those adopted by the FDA, are most effective at informing consumers about the health risks of smoking, discouraging children and other nonsmokers from starting to smoke, and motivating smokers to quit," Myers said in a statement. "Because of that evidence, at least 43 other countries now require large, graphic cigarette warnings."
Congress instructed the FDA to require the labels, following the lead of the Canadian regulations that require similarly graphic images on cigarette packs. Lawmakers approved the measure with wide bipartisan majorities, and supporter Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., also urged appeal. "Big Tobacco will stop at nothing to keep the cold, hard facts off their cigarette packages," he said in a statement.
The cigarette makers say their products have had Surgeon General warnings for more than 45 years, but that they never filed a legal challenge against them until these images were approved...
Again Laut you are wrong. The question is not weather tobacco use is glamour, or unhealthy. It's does the federal government have the power to require the producers of a legal product to put these pictures on their packages. What next, an image of someone from a motor cycle accident on the side of a Harley?
Now I find this interesting.
...AP Tobacco Writer Michael Felberbaum in Richmond, Va., contributed to this report.
Tobacco Writer? Really. What does he do the other days of the week when there is not a story about tobacco? Go out into booze and firearms?
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