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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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.
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.
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.
