Category: Location Privacy

13 posts
Can Under Skin GPS Tracking Devices Protect You If Kidnapped?

In Mexico many families are constantly living under the threat of being kidnapped. It is a scary but true reality. Kidnappings are up 317 percent in the past five years, according to a recent Mexican congressional report.

Wealthy and upper class Mexicans living in fear of being kidnapped are turning to GPS tracking devices as a precautionary measure. People are spending thousands of dollars to have GPS tracking-enabled RFID chips implanted under their skin and the skin of family members.

However, scientists are claiming the tracking devices don’t work, according to The Washington Post.

The chip, implanted in the tissue between the shoulder and elbow, sends a signal to a GPS tracking device that the wearer carries. The chip relays a signal to an external Global Positioning System unit the size of a cellphone, but if the owner is stripped of the GPS device in the event of an abduction, Xega can still track down its clients by sending radio signals to the implant. The company says it has helped rescue 178 clients in the past decade

According to the Post, this claim seems very unlikely to be true.

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DHS Using GPS-Tracking to Monitor Immigrant Families

The Department of Homeland Security is using GPS-enabled ankle bracelets to track families caught crossing into the country illegally and released into the U.S. Earlier this month Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced a program that provides some parents with GPS devices. Adults caught crossing illegally in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley were given the GPS-tracking devices and […]

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Man Places GPS Tracking Device on Car to Follow Wife, Lover

A Massachusetts man has been indicted for using a GPS tracking device as a tool to arrange a violent attack on his estranged wife and her lover. Hubert Hartley was upset and angry after his wife left him for her new boyfriend and took their children with her. Hartley had threatened to kill her or to have […]

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Another Day, Another Court Decision on Warrantless GPS Tracking

A split federal appeals court agreed Baltimore police acted in good faith when using a GPS tracking device without a warrant to track a suspect back in 2011. The GPS device was attached under the rear bumper of the suspect’s car and officers used the information provided to find and stop the vehicle.  They found […]

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GPS Tracking Devices Hidden on Financed Vehicles

More and more car dealerships are stashing GPS tracking devices on financed cars to track the vehicle. A man who removes the devices, often found under the driver compartment, estimates 70 percent of dealerships are hiding trackers in cars. Although consumers bristle at the privacy infringement, car dealers see it as a benefit to both sides. […]

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Wisconsin Bans Secret GPS Tracking

A legislative committee in Wisconsin has approved a bill outlawing the secret placement of a GPS device on a vehicle.  The legality of secretly tracking a person’s movement has been a hot topic of debate around the country. Under the bill, secretly placing a GPS tracking device on a person’s vehicle or otherwise using a […]

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Husband Leaves GPS Tracking Device Behind With Note

In what will easily be one of the more unusual GPS Tracking stories of the year, a man in the UK dumped a GPS device on the side of the road along with a pleading note. The husband, who was being tracked by his wife, discovered she was following his movements with a tracking device […]

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Feds May Require All New Cars to Have Tracking System

In the coming weeks, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will announce whether or not it will mandate peer communication and tracking systems in all new vehicles. The technology would enable vehicle-to-vehicle communication on the road and “provide warnings to drivers in as much as 76 percent of potential multi-vehicle collisions,” according to the Government […]

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Smartphones Tracking You, Even with GPS Off

Most people have no idea that when their GPS signal is turned off, their phone can still track them. That’s startling news for many who already worry about a lack of privacy, like Chris F of Tampa who says, “Of course it’s a concern. It’s 2013 and we have concerns for our lives and our […]

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GPS Tracking Without a Warrant is Legal, Judge Rules

Law enforcement agents do not need to obtain a warrant before placing a secret GPS tracking device on your vehicle, says a Missouri federal judge, who just ruled the FBI did not need a warrant to secretly attach a GPS tracking device to a government employee’s car to track his public movements for two months.

The FBI suspected that Fred Robinson was a “no-show employee” at the St. Louis City Treasurer’s Office — alleging that he collected $175,000 in paychecks without ever actually going to work, reports the Post-Dispatch and Forbes Magazine. While the FBI was investigating Robinson for this and for stealing money from a charter school, agents snuck a GPS tracking device onto the bottom of his Chevrolet Cavalier in January 2010 and used it to track his whereabouts for the next two months.

A court opinion notes that it would have taken “five or six agents” to do it without the GPS tracking device. The tracking device data allegedly proved that the employment time sheets Robinson submitted to the Treasury Office January through March were false.

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GPS Inventor Wants To Make Warrantless GPS Tracking Illegal

The New York Times has called the upcoming US v. Jones case “the most important Fourth Amendment case in a decade.” The NY Times said, “the answer will bring Fourth Amendment law into the digital age, addressing how its 18th-century prohibition of “unreasonable searches and seizures” applies to a world in which people’s movements are continuously recorded by devices in their cars, pockets and purses, by toll plazas and by transit systems.

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Should GPS Tracking Without a Warrant By Law Enforcement Be Legal?

GPS Tracking Without a Warrant – Should It Be Legal?

How would you feel if the police put a GPS tracking device on your vehicle without having a warrant? Without your knowledge, they would be able to track your movements quite well. If the police did this to you in order to gather evidence used to accuse you of a crime, you might rightly feel that your constitutional rights have been violated.

After all, the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects people facing criminal charges in California and across the United States from unreasonable searches and seizures. Logically, you could assume that placing a GPS tracking device on a person’s car without a warrant would be precisely that type of unreasonable search. However, law enforcement authorities would like to be able to do just that. The U.S. Supreme Court recently agreed to take on a case that will address this precise issue.

In 2005, Antoine Jones drove around with a GPS tracking device inconspicuously attached to his Jeep. He had no idea the GPS device was attached to his vehicle. The device recorded the vehicle’s every movement, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for about 4 weeks total. Law enforcement agents placed the tracking device on his vehicle without first obtaining a court ordered warrant.

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Justice Dept Says Warrantless GPS Tracking is Legal

GPS tracking without a warrant, law enforcement and 4th Amendment rights: The legal system has been quite divided over whether law enforcement must obtain a warrant before placing a GPS vehicle tracking device on a suspect’s car. In some cases, if someone is caught doing something illegal, and 1) the GPS tracking system information was used to convict him or her and 2) the GPS tracking system was placed by law enforcement without a warrant, convictions are not possible or overturned. But in other cases, courts have upheld the use of evidence obtained by placing a GPS tracking device on a suspect’s car without a warrant.

This week the US Justice Department entered the legal debate over GPS tracking, law enforcement and 4th Amendment rights. The Justice Dept is appealing a lower court ruling that reversed a criminal conviction because the police did not obtain a warrant for the GPS tracking device they secretly installed on a man’s car during a D.C. drug-trafficking investigation.

Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit reversed the life sentence of a Washington area man named Antoine Jones, saying the government violated Jones’ privacy rights in clandestinely tracking his movement for a month in a drug trafficking investigation. The initial ruling last summer says police can’t use GPS tracking technology to track a suspect’s car without getting a warrant. The full court, in a 5-4 decision last fall, refused to reconsider the decision. Now, the Justice Department, in a last-ditch effort, wants the Supreme Court to review the decision, arguing that it has broad implications for law enforcement across the country.

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