Supreme Court: Warrants needed in GPS tracking

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Supreme Court: Warrants needed in GPS tracking

January 23, 2012 by Jack Blood  

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that police must obtain a search warrant before using a GPS device to track criminal suspects. But the justices left for another day larger questions about how technology has altered a person’s expectation of privacy.

Washington Post

Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that the government needed a valid warrant before attaching a GPS device to the Jeep used by D.C. drug kingpin Antoine Jones, who was convicted in part because police tracked his movements on public roads for 28 days.

 

(Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg) – The Supreme Court building in Washington.

“We hold that the government’s installation of a GPS device on a target’s vehicle, and its use of that device to monitor the vehicle’s movements, constitutes a ‘search’ ” under the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, Scalia wrote.

All justices agreed with the outcome of the case, which affirmed a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit that said evidence of Jones’ s frequent trips to a stash house where drugs and nearly $1 million in cash were found must be thrown out.

The police had obtained a warrant for GPS surveillance of Jones, but it expired before they attached the device to his car.

But there was a significant split on the court about whether Monday’s decision went far enough.

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