Tag: court cases

New York Requires Warrant To GPS Track Suspects

If you were one of the people scared out of your mind that some states like Wisconsin allow warrantless GPS tracking of cars then you can breath a sigh of relief in knowing that not all the courts in our nation agree.  New York, in a recent court decision, ruled that police in the state must have a warrant when placing a GPS tracking device on a suspects car – joining Washington and Oregon who already have rulings in places ensuring this.

The New York court differed from the Wisconsin one in one major way – the New York court seemed to think that GPS tracking was in fact different from physical surveillance or other technological forms of tracking (like a radio frequency emitter).  The court wrote:

Here, we are not presented with the use of a mere beeper to facilitate visual surveillance during a single trip. GPS is a vastly different and exponentially more sophisticated and powerful technology that is easily and cheaply deployed and has virtually unlimited and remarkably precise tracking capability. […]  Constant, relentless tracking of anything is now not merely possible but entirely practicable …. GPS is not a mere enhancement of human sensory capacity, it facilitates a new technological perception of the world in which the situation of any object may be followed and exhaustively recorded over …  a practically unlimited period. The potential for a similar capture of information or “seeing” by law enforcement would require, at a minimum, millions of additional police officers and cameras on every street lamp.

The majority opinion of the court is trying to make a distinction between the information gathered from physical surveillance of technologically assisted surveillance (the beeper from the 1983 Wisconsin case used as precedent in both this case the more recent Wisconsin case) and that made possible by a GPS tracking device.  The main thrust seems to be that in order to gather similar information on an individual you would need “millions of additional police.”

The court then goes on to discuss the privacy issues involved in GPS tracking cases:

One need only consider what the police may learn, practically effortlessly, from planting a single device. The whole of a person’s progress through the world, into both public and private spatial spheres, can be charted and recorded over lengthy periods …. Disclosed in the data retrieved from the transmitting unit, nearly instantaneously with the press of a button on the highly portable receiving unit, will be trips the indisputably private nature of which takes little imagination to conjure: trips to the psychiatrist, the plastic surgeon, the abortion clinic, the AIDS treatment center, the strip club, the criminal defense attorney, the by-the-hour motel, the union meeting, the mosque, synagogue or church, the gay bar and on and on. What the technology yields and records …  is a highly detailed profile … of where we go,  … of our associations — political, religious, amicable and amorous, to name only a few — and of the pattern of our professional and avocational pursuits. When multiple GPS devices are utilized, even more precisely resolved inferences about our activities are possible. And … it will be possible to tell from … who we are and are not with, when we are and are not with them, and what we do and do not carry on our persons — to mention just a few of the highly feasible empirical configurations.

This judgment reads to me that the court made its decision to deny warrantless GPS tracking because it would give the police a lot of information about a suspects activities and would be much, much cheaper than putting a “tail” on the suspect.

Personally, I can’t seem to make myself agree with the courts rulings.  I am not a lawyer nor am I trained in the law, but it seems to me like the information gather by a GPS tracking device attached to a car could be gather by a physical tail on a suspect – but just at a much greater cost.

A police officer could tell if a person drove their car to a mosque, or a church, or a bar, or a friends house, or to work, or to a soccer game, or to their child’s recital.  All this information would be easily accessible to any person capable of seeing and all of it would be occurring in public space – where people have no fundamental right to privacy.

Granted, GPS tracking a cell phone could provide police with a much larger amount of information that would track a person’s movement’s within completely private places – such as a doctors office, or a church building, or a private club – so perhaps the court’s decision is taking these into consideration as well.

However, I am concerned with the way their ruling could affect the police’s ability to easily and precisely put a tail on a suspects vehicle. GPS tracking for cars will only really track the movements of an individual’s car in public places – something that seems very reasonable for the police to be able to track with GPS.  It is much more cost effective and gives them an opportunity to utilize their skilled officers in other tasks.

In the end, whether or not GPS tracking for cars will require a warrant or not is going to be decided in cases like this all over the country by Appellate courts who are going to differ on what the nature of GPS tracking is and what that means for a person’s 4th Amendment rights.

Wisconsin Allows Warrantless GPS Tracking of Cars

In a decision filed on Mar 7, 2009, the Wisconsin VI District Court of Appeals made a ruling that has interesting implications for GPS tracking’s place in society and law enforcement.  In the case in question, State of Wisconsin v. Michael A. Sveum, the defendant (Michael Sveum) was arguing that the GPS tracking device installed on his car by the police was in violation of his 4th Amendment right of protection from unreasonable searches and seizures.  The police claim that they did not violate Sveum’s 4th Amendment rights.

The crux of the issue here is summarized nicely by the court in their written decision, authored by Judge Paul Lundsten:

Michael Sveum challenges his aggravated stalking conviction. At Sveum’s jury trial, the prosecution presented detailed tracking information about the movements of Sveum’s car obtained from a Global Positioning System tracking device (GPS device) that police secretly attached to his car. Sveum argues that the police obtained this tracking information in violation of his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. The State responds that no Fourth Amendment search or seizure occurs when police attach a GPS device to the outside of a vehicle while it is in a place accessible to the public and then use that device to track the vehicle while it is in public view.  We agree with the State.

The court’s decision has some interesting implications.  What the court essentially did in ruling in favor of the state in this appeal is open up the public to warrantless GPS tracking of a suspects car, truck, or van.

This has caused a lot of buzz, with fear mongers taking up the call of state oppression and fears that their rights of privacy are being violated unduly.  I think a lot of this talk is not constructive and does little to actaully help protect citizen’s privacy from unreasonable searches and seizures.

When you sit down and think about it logically, the court’s decision makes a lot of sense.  GPS tracking is a lot like physical surveillance, except that you don’t have to spend tax payer’s money on sitting a person outside a suspects home for hours on end.  According to one news report, the GPS tracking for cars was used for 5 weeks to monitor Sveum’s activity. How much would it have cost to put a tail on a suspect day and night, 7 days a week, for five weeks?  A lot of money.

After the 5 weeks of tracking was up, the device was retrieved from the car and then processed by police.  The location information that they uncovered helped them get a warrant to search Sveum’s car and home, the resulting evidence discovered was enough for a jury to convict the defendant of aggravated stalking.

If you think about it, the information gathered from the GPS tracking device installed on the car was exactly the same as that that could be gathered from physical observation.  Cars travel in public places and can be easily view by authorities with a desire to do so.  Such tailing is not a violation of a person’s 4th Amendment right and so the court reasoned that the GPS tracking was permissible.

It also reasoned that since tailing a suspect can be done without a warrant (since their activity is within the public sphere) then the GPS tracking of a car can also be done without a warrant.

Now in the Sveum case there was a warrant that let the police use the GPS tracking device, but the language of the court’s ruling indicated that this warrant was unnecessary.  Again, the language of the court:

Sveum challenges the admission of GPS tracking information showing the movements of his car. He argues that the warrant authorizing police to place the GPS device on his car was overly broad. The State responds that the warrant was unnecessary because no Fourth Amendment search or seizure occurred. In reply, Sveum implicitly concedes that placing the GPS device on his car and using it to monitor public travel does not implicate the Fourth Amendment. He contends, however, that because the GPS device permitted the police to monitor the location of his car while it was in his garage and in his employer’s garage, places out of public view, all of the information obtained from the GPS device should have been suppressed. Because we agree with the State that no Fourth Amendment search or seizure occurred, we do not address Sveum’s warrant argument.

Clear as crystal – the police, at least in Wisconsin, do not need to have a search warrant to place a GPS tracking device on your car.  They can do it for any reason and for presumably any purpose – as long as their resources allow it.

If you want to read the full text of the court’s decision you can do so here: State v. Michael A. Sveum

Update: May 20, 2009

According to the New York Court of Appeals, police inside New York must have a warrant when when using GPS tracking on a suspects car.  This is directly opposite of what the Wisconsin court ruled just a few weeks ago.  This difference in ruling highlights some of the current issues with the use of new technology in ever expanding areas of life.  Readers old enough to remember the stir that wire tapping raised when it was first introduced will see some similarities between that and GPS tracking.  If you want to learn more about this case and their ruling,check out our post New York Requires Warrant To GPS Track Suspects

Do you think that there is something fundamentally wrong with the Wisconsin’s ability to freely use GPS tracking on individuals?  Why or why not?