WWTBAM Bored

The Supreme Court today in a 5-4 ruling put limits on the use of GPS technology to track suspects for extended periods of time without a warrant. In this case, the police tracked the suspect's location for 127 days, during which time he was in the vicinity of several robberies for which he was later convicted. The Court said that went too far, and that precedents from pre-cellphone technology cases about people supposedly giving their consent to such searches did not apply here. The Chief Justice wrote the opinion, joined by the four liberal justices. The Court did not say that police couldn't use other methods of tracking like surveillance cameras, or that they couldn't make exceptions in cases of emergencies.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/ ... 723239002/

I'm not a lawyer, and I'm anything but sympathetic to criminals, but I think this is a good ruling.

The Gorsuch dissent is interesting. It's been too long since I studied this subject in law school and I haven't kept up with the last 25 years of developments in the field, but he may be on to something. He's certainly inviting litigants to make an additional argument in similar cases. --Bob

About a year ago, I attended a symposium where this topic was discussed — what are the rules for searches and seizures in our digital world. There was the discussion that police needed warrants to put trackers on cars in the old days.

Key fact here is that one cannot make the choice to shield the info without extraordinary effort. Not enough to turn off your phone, but you also have to use faraday bag or pull SIM card.

Isn't this as simple as making sure you get a warrant in non-emergency cases? Of course it isn't actually as simple as that, but it should be.

IronmanTim wrote:Isn't this as simple as making sure you get a warrant in non-emergency cases? Of course it isn't actually as simple as that, but it should be.

The problem with getting a warrant is that you have to show probable cause that this person is involved in criminal activity. You can't just go around rousting "bad actors" on the theory that they may have done something.