The Government's New Right to Track Your Every Move With GPS

The Government's New Right to Track Your Every Move With GPS

Adam Cohen
Yahoo News
Aug 26, 2010

Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn't violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway - and no reasonable expectation that the government isn't tracking your movements.

That is the bizarre - and scary - rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants - with no need for a search warrant.

It is a dangerous decision - one that, as the dissenting judges warned, could turn America into the sort of totalitarian state imagined by George Orwell. It is particularly offensive because the judges added insult to injury with some shocking class bias: the little personal privacy that still exists, the court suggested, should belong mainly to the rich.

This case began in 2007, when Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents decided to monitor Juan Pineda-Moreno, an Oregon resident who they suspected was growing marijuana. They snuck onto his property in the middle of the night and found his Jeep in his driveway, a few feet from his trailer home. Then they attached a GPS tracking device to the vehicle's underside.

After Pineda-Moreno challenged the DEA's actions, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled in January that it was all perfectly legal. More disturbingly, a larger group of judges on the circuit, who were subsequently asked to reconsider the ruling, decided this month to let it stand. (Pineda-Moreno has pleaded guilty conditionally to conspiracy to manufacture marijuana and manufacturing marijuana while appealing the denial of his motion to suppress evidence obtained with the help of GPS.)

In fact, the government violated Pineda-Moreno's privacy rights in two different ways. For starters, the invasion of his driveway was wrong. The courts have long held that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their homes and in the "curtilage," a fancy legal term for the area around the home. The government's intrusion on property just a few feet away was clearly in this zone of privacy.

The judges veered into offensiveness when they explained why Pineda-Moreno's driveway was not private. It was open to strangers, they said, such as delivery people and neighborhood children, who could wander across it uninvited.

Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, who dissented from this month's decision refusing to reconsider the case, pointed out whose homes are not open to strangers: rich people's. The court's ruling, he said, means that people who protect their homes with electric gates, fences and security booths have a large protected zone of privacy around their homes. People who cannot afford such barriers have to put up with the government sneaking around at night.

Judge Kozinski is a leading conservative, appointed by President Ronald Reagan, but in his dissent he came across as a raging liberal. "There's been much talk about diversity on the bench, but there's one kind of diversity that doesn't exist," he wrote. "No truly poor people are appointed as federal judges, or as state judges for that matter." The judges in the majority, he charged, were guilty of "cultural elitism."

The court went on to make a second terrible decision about privacy: that once a GPS device has been planted, the government is free to use it to track people without getting a warrant. There is a major battle under way in the federal and state courts over this issue, and the stakes are high. After all, if government agents can track people with secretly planted GPS devices virtually anytime they want, without having to go to a court for a warrant, we are one step closer to a classic police state - with technology taking on the role of the KGB or the East German Stasi.

Fortunately, other courts are coming to a different conclusion from the Ninth Circuit's - including the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. That court ruled, also this month, that tracking for an extended period of time with GPS is an invasion of privacy that requires a warrant. The issue is likely to end up in the Supreme Court.

In these highly partisan times, GPS monitoring is a subject that has both conservatives and liberals worried. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit's pro-privacy ruling was unanimous - decided by judges appointed by Presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

Plenty of liberals have objected to this kind of spying, but it is the conservative Chief Judge Kozinski who has done so most passionately. "1984 may have come a bit later than predicted, but it's here at last," he lamented in his dissent. And invoking Orwell's totalitarian dystopia where privacy is essentially nonexistent, he warned: "Some day, soon, we may wake up and find we're living in Oceania."

Cohen, a lawyer, is a former TIME writer and a former member of the New York Times editorial board.

Ok... why would they want to trace the movements of everybody all of the time. Sounds like this guy is in need of a tinfoil hat.

Over here, it's unconstitutional. But it technically won't be until it gets to our Supreme Court. Then they'll strike it down.

This technology has existed for twenty years. Why is it only a story now?

Law enforcement putting a GPS unit on your vehicle without your knowledge is ok with you?

TexasBlue wrote:Law enforcement putting a GPS unit on your vehicle without your knowledge is ok with you?

Absolutely not. It wouldn't happen though - at least not nationally. It's unconstitutional to the extreme. I wouldn't put it past some local authorities (read: police) to do it in some precincts (read: Texas) though. But this would never happen at the national level. I say again though, the technology to do such a thing already exists.

i_luv_miley wrote:Absolutely not. It wouldn't happen though - at least not nationally. It's unconstitutional to the extreme. I wouldn't put it past some local authorities (read: police) to do it in some precincts (read: Texas) though. But this would never happen at the national level. I say again though, the technology to do such a thing already exists.

The Texas dig is a dig. This actually happened in Oregon. Again with the broad brush of a southern state?

TexasBlue wrote:

i_luv_miley wrote:Absolutely not. It wouldn't happen though - at least not nationally. It's unconstitutional to the extreme. I wouldn't put it past some local authorities (read: police) to do it in some precincts (read: Texas) though. But this would never happen at the national level. I say again though, the technology to do such a thing already exists.

The Texas dig is a dig. This actually happened in Oregon. Again with the broad brush of a southern state?

Of course it's a dig. And yes, it could happen in any small town, USA where the local authorities feel they can get away with it. It is more likely to happen in the south where the local authorities (and a lot of locals) feel threatened (by something that isn't real). You do realize that in the south (as well as in Arizona now) that you can be pulled over just for looking a certain way. It's been happening for a long time. Where's the outcry over that?

I'm not necessarily diputing the validity of the story. Stuff happens. But I am calling it out for being one-sided.

i_luv_miley wrote:Of course it's a dig. And yes, it could happen in any small town, USA where the local authorities feel they can get away with it. It is more likely to happen in the south where the local authorities (and a lot of locals) feel threatened (by something that isn't real). You do realize that in the south (as well as in Arizona now) that you can be pulled over just for looking a certain way. It's been happening for a long time. Where's the outcry over that?

Yeah? I used to live in Ft. Worth, ya know. I don't recall things like that happening down there that didn't end up in litigation. Has it happened? Sure thing. But you know what? It's happened in Minnesota, too. After living in the south an being brought up in the north (and living there again), the only thing i see different in the south is the accent. I heard so much bigoted shit about the north when i lived in Texas and i hear the same shit up here.

But let's get back to the GPS thing.

i_luv_miley wrote:I'm not necessarily disputing the validity of the story. Stuff happens. But I am calling it out for being one-sided.

Then post some "one-sided" shit by the "other" side.

TexasBlue wrote:Then post some "one-sided" shit by the "other" side.

I'll have to do that. I'm sure there's plenty out there.

And that's really my point. I'm not against the story per se (except when I don't think it's actually important), but it's the language I object to - especially from someone like O'Reilly or Yahoo or whoever. That's why I commented. He just makes no sense to me - about anything. Okay having said that, you do have a point Tex. I should post more stories in here as well and give everyone equal opportunity to respond. MSNBC, here I come!

As for the story, it's just not a story to me. It could happen, but that hardly means that it will - or that we should even be concerened about it. Or that Bill O'Reilly or whoever should be talking about it.

i_luv_miley wrote:And that's really my point. I'm not against the story per se (except when I don't think it's actually important), but it's the language I object to - especially from someone like O'Reilly. That's why I commented. He just makes no sense to me - about anything. Okay having said that, you do have a point Tex. I should post more stories in here as well and give everyone equal opportunity to respond. MSNBC, here I come!

As for the story, it's just not a story to me. It could happen, but that hardly means that it will - or that we should even be concerened about it. Or that Bill O'Reilly should be talking about it.

You really should watch Bill in the evening to get what he's really saying about this shit here to get a true grip on what he says. Not this week though. He's on vacation (with Obama ).

Hey, i don't mind left wing stuff being posted. That way i can pick that stuff apart, too.

So Tex, why would they want to track everybody all of the time?

If they tried to track me, they'll be bored to death because I have no life!
"Hey look...he's heading to the bathroom...Heaven's to Betsy, he's working with the tidy-bowl man to devise an evil plot!"

The_Amber_Spyglass wrote:So Tex, why would they want to track everybody all of the time?

I don't know. In this case, it was for supposed criminal activity. They can track him/her but they need a warrant first. They never got one. It's the same thing with the wiretapping issue a few years ago under the Bush admin.

TheNextPrez2012 wrote:If they tried to track me, they'll be bored to death because I have no life!
"Hey look...he's heading to the bathroom...Heaven's to Betsy, he's working with the tidy-bowl man to devise an evil plot!"

No shit. Mine's even more boring than yours.

The government can pretty much already track you in so many different ways, it's not even funny. Cellphones, computers, cars, etc. if they really wanted to, they could find out where you are every second of the day.
However, planting a GPS on your car isn't right. I don't think it's worse than wiretapping though. But it's legal with the permission of a judge and ít does put criminals behind bars. And even if the government listented in on my phonecalls or followed me everyday, what are they gonna find? Nothing.

It's the same as wiretapping. It's unconstitutional. But again, you're over there now, so it doesn't matter... does it?

Wiretapping/phone surveillance is legal if a judge authorizes it. If it's not authorized, it can't be used in court.

Well, I guess Matt and I should just remove ourselves from this forum since we're "over here" now and it doesn't matter?

BubbleBliss wrote:Wiretapping/phone surveillance is legal if a judge authorizes it. If it's not authorized, it can't be used in court.

That's the point of the article. No warrants. Did you read it?????? Would you put up with that as a citizen?

BubbleBliss wrote:Well, I guess Matt and I should just remove ourselves from this forum since we're "over here" now and it doesn't matter?

The point i made (in haste to go to work) was to point out that our constitution doesn't mean nothing to you now that you're back home. Kapiche?

TexasBlue wrote:

BubbleBliss wrote:Wiretapping/phone surveillance is legal if a judge authorizes it. If it's not authorized, it can't be used in court.

That's the point of the article. No warrants. Did you read it?????? Would you put up with that as a citizen?

I already said that they have no right to do that, didn't I?

TexasBlue wrote:

BubbleBliss wrote:Well, I guess Matt and I should just remove ourselves from this forum since we're "over here" now and it doesn't matter?

The point i made (in haste to go to work) was to point out that our constitution doesn't mean nothing to you now that you're back home. Kapiche?

It does if it supports irresponsible business behaviour that will plunge the world into another recession like this.

BubbleBliss wrote:I already said that they have no right to do that, didn't I?

It felt like you were excusing it. There's no excuse for this just like there was no excuse with it under Bush.

BubbleBliss wrote:It does if it supports irresponsible business behaviour that will plunge the world into another recession like this.

The constitution doesn't apply in that manner. Laws congress has passed, does. But that's besides the point. My point is that you were protected by our constitution when you lived here, even as a non-citizen. Not anymore, obviously.

I didn't excuse it.

I'm now protected by a Constitution that guarantees me the same freedoms your Constitution did. Most Constitutions among the developed countries have a lot in common.

BubbleBliss wrote:I'm now protected by a Constitution that guarantees me the same freedoms your Constitution did. Most Constitutions among the developed countries have a lot in common.

I understand that. But you can't go out and buy a gun on a whim.

Which makes me feel much safer.

I pity you.