The Market Ticker – Supremes Rule Covert GPS Is a “Search”
No. 10–1259. Argued November 8, 2011—Decided January 23, 2012
The Government obtained a search warrant permitting it to install a Global-Positioning-System (GPS) tracking device on a vehicle registered to respondent Jones’s wife. The warrant authorized installation in the District of Columbia and within 10 days, but agents installed the device on the 11th day and in Maryland. The Government then tracked the vehicle’s movements for 28 days. It subsequently secured an indictment of Jones and others on drug trafficking conspiracy charges. The District Court suppressed the GPS data obtained while the vehicle was parked at Jones’s residence, but held the remaining data admissible because Jones had no reasonable expectation of privacy when the vehicle was on public streets. Jones was convicted. The D. C. Circuit reversed, concluding that admission of the evidence obtained by warrantless use of the GPS device violated the Fourth Amendment.
Held:
The Government’s attachment of the GPS device to the vehicle, and its use of that device to monitor the vehicle’s movements, constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment. Pp. 3–12.
(a) The Fourth Amendment protects the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” Here, the Government’s physical intrusion on an “effect” for the purpose of obtaining information constitutes a “search.” This type of encroachment on an area enumerated in the Amendment would have been considered a search within the meaning of the Amendment at the time it was adopted. Pp. 3–4.
(b) This conclusion is consistent with this Court’s Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, which until the latter half of the 20th century was tied to common-law trespass. Later cases, which have deviated from that exclusively property-based approach, have applied the analysis of Justice Harlan’s concurrence in Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347, which said that the Fourth Amendment protects a person’s “reasonable expectation of privacy,” id., at 360. Here, the Court need not address the Government’s contention that Jones had no “reasonable expectation of privacy,” because Jones’s Fourth Amendment rights do not rise or fall with the Katz formulation. At bottom, the Court must “assur[e] preservation of that degree of privacy against government that existed when the Fourth Amendment was adopted.” Kyllo v. United States, 533 U. S. 27, 34. Katz did not repudiate the understanding that the Fourth Amendment embodies a particular concern for government trespass upon the areas it enumerates. The Katz reasonable-expectation-of-privacy test has been added to, but not substituted for, the common-law trespassory test. See Alderman v.
United States, 394 U. S. 165, 176; Soldal v. Cook County, 506 U. S. 56, 64. United States v. Knotts, 460 U. S. 276, and United States v. Karo, 468 U. S. 705—post-Katz cases rejecting Fourth Amendment challenges to “beepers,” electronic tracking devices representing another form of electronic monitoring—do not foreclose the conclusion that a search occurred here. New York v. Class, 475 U. S. 106, and Oliver v. United States, 466 U. S. 170, also do not support the Government’s position. Pp. 4–12.(c) The Government’s alternative argument—that if the attachment and use of the device was a search, it was a reasonable one—is forfeited because it was not raised below. P. 12.
615 F. 3d 544, affirmed.
SCALIA, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS, C. J., and KENNEDY, THOMAS, and SOTOMAYOR, JJ., joined. SOTOMAYOR, J., filed a concurring opinion. ALITO, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which GINSBURG, BREYER, and KAGAN, JJ., joined.
So much for that.
If the cops want to stick a GPS on someone’s car and track their movements, they have to get a warrant first before doing so or the evidence they receive by doing so is illegally-obtained and thus barred.
Score one for The Constitution, and note the vote — 9-0 with concurring opinions.
Do read the decision and opinions though — there is an interesting discussion contained therein on the advance of technology and it provides a glimpse of how the protection provided by this decision may, in the future, be lost. For this reason a campaign to get statutory relief to prevent such an outcome appears to be in order.
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4clsoureFraud.org
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The city of concord n.c. broke into my home without a warrant and the city tore down my home and forced me to living opn the streets, no lawyer would help. All my rights were violated so many times, but no lawyer would even talk to me about the case.
The Roman soldiers are at it again…dictating orders from Rome…! Revolt on all of Wall Streets debt America…that is precisely how they are holding America hostage…..they want to force us into debt slavery by bankrupting us and then fixing their mess they intentionally created with the microchip!!! A country in debt is not free…END THE WARS!! Fight that fraudclosure.. OUR HOMES ARE PAID FOR….! WALL STREET CANCELLED THE NOTES AND MORTGAGES WHEN THEY CREATED $700 TRILLION IN DEBT FRAUD FOR THEMSELVES!!!
I was watching a you tube video last night that raised the issue that these crooks are obtaining bonds in exchange for approved credit applications and gambling on those too!…They have supposedly found a loophole where they turn those approved credit aps into a security and obtain a bond and a CUSIP NUMBER that allows them to trade off of these via the SEC TRADE RULES!!!!! THESE PEOPLE ARE SICK CRIMINALS…!!!!
I want to add this is not new this has been going on for a long time with credit aps…..remember when they were dropping those credit aps on us by the millions…pre-approved!!! They were creating more pigs and crap to gamble on WALL STREET with those approved credit aps….they are not brilliant….they are criminal deviants!!!! They do the same thing with our birth certificates!
The video also says…if a creditor is threatening you send them a QWR…UNDER US TITLE CODE 15…and request the CUSIP NUMBER and they will withdraw their suit…This is no doubt why they hide behind debt collection agencies to hide their fraudulent activity…like with the mortgages..they are using third party debt collectors to try and mask their fraud…the difference with that is the third party debt collector on a mortgage still stands in the shoes of the original lender….PROPERTY LAW IS POWER!!!!