WARRANTS FOR GPS TRACKERS = NOT A RULE SO MUCH AS FRIENDLY ADVICE

[defrog]

THE GOOD NEWS: The Supreme Court has ruled that the police shouldn’t slap a GPS tracker on yr car without a warrant.

THE BAD NEWS: Police were actually doing that.

THE OTHER BAD NEWS: The Supreme Court didn’t actually say you must have a warrant to do that. What they said was that sticking a GPS tracker on yr car counts as a “search” as defined by the Fourth Amendment, and that it would be “wise” to get a proper search warrant before doing so.

But the ruling doesn’t say you have to get one. And it doesn’t lay out any qualifications or guidelines for the police to follow in deciding whether they need one. That won’t happen until the next time someone finds a tracker on their car and sues the police all the way up to the Supremes for another ruling.

That won’t be easy, because apparently the Obama admin has been avoiding appealing cases like this, especially in regards to tracking people via mobile phones. According to Wired:

Federal agents track people without a warrant, and in some instances, are slapped down by some district courts for this (in our view and in the view of these district courts) unlawful behavior. But they refrain from taking those losses to the courts of appeals, perhaps because a ruling that they need a warrant would then become the law of the land in the territory of that appeals court, and they want to be able to continue to engage in warrantless cell phone tracking whenever they can.

See what they did there?

Search me,

This is dF