Does Warrantless GPS Tracking of People by the Police Violate the Fourth Amendment??

zukiphile said:
It might violate a right of personal security though and is a possible unreasonable search. There is a principle that things so identified with a person's body can be treated as that person's body for analytical purposes. There is a case in which a court found the striking of a man's cane as he held it an assault; hitting his cane was found to be equivalent to hitting him.
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I was wondering if the idea of attaching tracking devices to clothing would ever be addressed in this thread, since it seems similar to attaching them to cars. Maybe I have crazy ideas about property rights, but I don't think anyone should be attaching his stuff to my stuff as a general principle. Part of the idea of "my stuff" is that anyone else leaves it alone, and that includes the government. There are exceptions, but they should be supervised by a judge, not at the discretion of an individual cop.

Moving past clothing, I also think I own my body. They have cheap, implantable tracking devices for pets and livestock. Coming soon to an internet forum near you, I predict this sentiment:

Only a criminal would refuse to get a tracking implant. What have you got to hide? This will help to efficiently fight crime, and good people have nothing to fear!
 
Only a criminal would refuse to get a tracking implant. What have you got to hide? This will help to efficiently fight crime, and good people have nothing to fear!
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Oh no, I draw the line way before that point.
 
Part of the problem here, in my opinion, is that the law seems to have a very hard time keeping up with new technology that comes out.

Remember that back when the Constitution was written, photography did not yet even exist.

I guess this all comes down to what is "a reasonable expectation of privacy"??

What what I have been able to discover from looking at various court rulings, it would appear that people have no right to privacy while they are driving their car on public roads.

Yet, courts have ruled that people do have a right to privacy, when they go to public events like a sporting event or concert, or dine at a restaurant.

The whole concept of the government tracking citizens electronically without any judicial review just strikes me as being so totally like the future that was predicted in "1984". It feels very alien an un-American to me.

Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Knowledge.

.
 
Now that's funny!!

We all have something to hide and that doesn't neccessarily mean it's illegal. It's called personal space & privacy. Humans have an unseen personal zone or bubble around themselves (intimate zone usually 6 to 18 inches) that when invaded can create physiological reaction in the body and mind. Anger if a man invades, or pleasure if a woman invades. This is a fact of life and not something that can be legislated away, lol.

We all extend our intimate zone or personal space as far as we wish or our comfort level will allow. Some people are comfortable with smaller zones. Most extend their personal zone to their vehicle, and rightly so! That some people (or cultures, Japan fer instanance) are comfortable with a smaller intimate zone than others and do not feel intruded upon where others might (GPS trackers in this discussion) doesn't mean that the others who do feel invaded upon have to have something to hide! Thats a logical fallacy and no offense but sounds moronic.;)

We would all fare better as a people and a nation if we took offense to this kind of intrusion. If I find one on my vehicle, I'm beatin it with a hammer and destroying it!! If I were to catch someone in the act of planting one on my vehicle, well, I hope they're in full uniform so I don't mistakenly believe they're planting a bomb or something and respond uh inappropriately shall we say?
 
So, would the police attaching a GPS tracking device to your outer garments (clothing which the public can reasonably be expected to see) an invasion of your privacy?
I would have to say that it doesn't violate your privacy since thing the public sees aren't private (in terms of a reasonable expectation of privacy or confidentiality).
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What about attaching other things? Yellow stars, perhaps?
 
I don't normally respond to these kinds of threads, but

do you really think that when you make a cellphone call, it's not logged as to where and when. It is. To an amazing degree of accuracy. Unless you have a pre-gps chip phone, which have been all but removed from service. Home phones, obviously are hard-wired into the system.

Cars, especially those with "On-Star" and the like can be tracked 24-7. Really belive it's only activated when you need your doors unlocked? Look it up, car companies have for years in computer controlled vehicles maintained logs of your driving stats.

Checking up on the Firing line forum tonight or perhaps emailing a buddy re: whatever? The friendly folks at the NSA will be having a look at you.

Buying something online or even just in a store via credit/debit? You can bet the "we're her to help" folks of the US Government know about it.

Park in an airport parking deck? They know from your tag when you came in and left to "help you find your car".

Run a red light (or maybe not) in Florida or another state with traffic cameras? Hello ticket even if you aren't the one driving.

I'll stop there but the wholesale giving away of our rights has to stop. Since "9/11" the good people of the US have been giving away our rights in the name of "protection from terrorists" like a blue light special at K-Mart and it's high time this ended.

Not a crazy, zombie shooting, end of the world guy, but damn, leave our rights alone.

Oh yeah (keeping this on topic) - I think the GPS tracking thing is an abuse. Period. Earn your money the old-fashioned way.

Someone who has nothing to hide but still thinks it's none of anyone else's business...

Jon Thibodeau
 
Just like motorcycle helmet and seatbelt laws are there to protect us from ourselves, right?
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I can't stand those laws. I hate being regulated and told what I can do with my own life. A seat belt can save my life and those in the vehicle with me, but for the love, let me make my own decisions. If someone doesn't want to wear a seatbelt, fine. They can kill themselves, one less idiot.

On the other hand, children can't make the parents wear them. If the child is buckled in and the parent isn't, the parent can kill everyone in the car from the "bounce" effect. So in that law, we are protecting the ones that can't protect themselves.

But it's going to take the right court case to make a ruling on the no warrent GPS tracking units.
 
I haven't read all of this thread so this may have been brought up before but I see teh GPS tracking on your car differently than your body or clothes. They are tracking the movements of your car which will almost always be out in public view. They won't be tracking your car inside of your house or other private locations. When you walk down the street you don't have an expectation of privacy because anyone that sees you will know where you are. However when you go inside your house no one has the right to know which room you are in. This would apply to your clothes or your body.

I do see how some would think this would be an invasion or privacy but after thinking it over I think maybe not.
 
They are tracking the movements of your car which will almost always be out in public view. They won't be tracking your car inside of your house or other private locations.
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No? My driveway is nearly half a mile long, and halfway down you turn a corner and are no longer in public view, and well onto private property.

So I don't buy your distinction, and that's not even getting into difficulties with GPS reception indoors.
 
The point here to this whole long thread is if there currently is a right to anonymity?

If not, why not? Should there be a constitutional amendment to guarantee that right?
 
Short and sweet:

Assuming that the PTB want to follow me, I have no objection; legal, moral or ethical.

But placing a tracking device on my vehicle? Under what presumed power does the government get to lay hands on my private property without my permission?

For me, that's the crux of the whole matter. You want to touch my stuff without my permission? Get a warrant.

By the way, privacy is implied in the Third amendment, and to an extent, the Fourth amendment. But like the right to travel, it is part and parcel of the Liberty clause of the Fifth amendment (see Kent v. Dulles, 357 U.S. 116 (1958)). No need for emanations and penumbras.
 
But placing a tracking device on my vehicle? Under what presumed power does the government get to lay hands on my private property without my permission?
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Probably the same way the police in several states can search your trash that is inside a trash can accessible to the public. The police wouldn't actually be searching your car or even entering your vehicle. They would merely be placing something on your vehicle.
 
By the way, privacy is implied in the Third amendment, and to an extent, the Fourth amendment. But like the right to travel, it is part and parcel of the Liberty clause of the Fifth amendment (see Kent v. Dulles, 357 U.S. 116 (1958)). No need for emanations and penumbras.
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The Griswold formulation certainly courts ridicule, but it also serves as a warning of what can happen when matters are implied into the text.

A protection against being forced to lodge soldiers in your home is primarily just that, though it may serve an incidental purpose of protecting your privacy. Protection against unreasonable search could certainly serve to maintain privacy that would otherwise be breach by that method, but it isn't a pricay right per se; I would want to protest an unreasonable search even where my privacy were not an issue. It isn't obvious that surveillance or tracking in itself restricts your liberty to enagage in any act.

It isn't that we should refrain from vigorous enforcement of each of these protects that may or may not also protect facets of our privacy; it is that a generalised right of privacy isn't a constitutional creature.
 
Well, this creature thinks its high time that privacy is made constitutional right!
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Why? I would favor some modest additional protection against grotesque press interference, but I am not confident that the COTUS needs to be amended.

We see several instances of a right that can serve to protect one's privacy (a term we've left undefined, but which you might not define the same way Paris Hilton and Pamela Anderson do). Should we gather these individual points, assume or imply a motivation to protect privacy generally, and proclaim that as a constitutional right? I see that as a very problemmatic way to read the document.

There was a time when for the most part, white, property owning males were the only voters. With the Jacksonian revolution this was expanded to most white men, then to men of all races, then women, then people between 18 and 21. These separate points appear to arise from a single principle that having more people vote is better. We can proclaim this general principle, and expand the franchise to all teenagers since that would be consistent with the principle we have observed that expansion of the franchise is a constitutional imperative.

Except that there is no such imperative, and each of the prior expansions of the franchise was its own considered decision. So too are the individual protections that we might marshal to protect our "privacy".
 
Why?

Because the right to privacy is every bit as important as the right to vote or the right to keep and bear arms, and should be afforded the protections of a constitutional amendment.

I believe most certainly that there is an imperative in this day and age of electronic record keeping and when data mining is so rampant and easy that even the anonymity of the internet is far from guaranteed. The continuing escalation of video monitoring on the scale found in London, England is not far from our future. The mining that went on behind closed door during the wire-tap debacle only further my assertion that this right needs to be addressed NOW.
 
Quote:
They are tracking the movements of your car which will almost always be out in public view. They won't be tracking your car inside of your house or other private locations.

No? My driveway is nearly half a mile long, and halfway down you turn a corner and are no longer in public view, and well onto private property.

So I don't buy your distinction, and that's not even getting into difficulties with GPS reception indoors.
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Even if your driveway is that long you could still be seen from the air and tracked. If you have a covered driveway where you can't be seen then the GPS wouldn't work. Just because you can't be seen from the ground doesn't mean you can't be tracked without GPS. Ariel searches for drugs take place regularly on private property and then warrants issued for ground searches.
 
That's true, PT111, but I'm still not buying the distinction. The implication of this "distinction" is that GPS tracking on clothing would electronically simulate something which requires a warrant, namely tracking the movements of individuals within a building. That's just not the case, because a GPS won't work indoors.

The purpose of attaching tracking devices to clothing could only be to tell where a person went when outdoors, and maybe which building he last entered, which is the same purpose as when the devices are put on cars. If one would require a warrant, both would.
 
Antipitas said:
Under what presumed power does the government get to lay hands on my private property without my permission?
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Well, if they have a warrant, they don't need your permission, but other than that, I agree with your sentiment. It's a property rights issue to me.
 
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