Opinion: Is police monitoring via GPS constitutional?
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On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on whether police who attached an electronic tracking device to a suspect’s car without a warrant and followed him for a month were in violation of the 4th Amendment. In our editorial board’s opinion, unlimited surveillance is creepy. The justices were also uncomfortable with 24/7 surveillance, but Deputy Solicitor Gen. Michael Dreeben saw it differently. In his argument, he wanted the court:
‘[…] to treat GPS tracking the same way it treats visual observation of a suspect on a public street. ‘What a person seeks to preserve as private in the enclave of his own home or in a private letter or inside of his vehicle when he is traveling is a subject of 4th Amendment protection,’ Dreeben said. ‘But what he reveals to the world, such as his movements in a car on a public roadway, is not.’
Although that succinctly explains the government’s argument, it does not consider the scope of police GPS tracking. With it, officers may follow as many people as they want indefinitely. And though it’s true that police could follow suspects day and night in person, it’s rarely done.
In interpreting the 4th Amendment’s ban on illegal searches and seizures, the court must consider how the real world works. In that world, GPS tracking allows police a picture of a suspect’s life that never would be generated by ordinary police methods. As Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. put it on Tuesday: ‘… you’re talking about the difference between seeing the little tile and seeing a mosaic.’
Here are some reader comments from our discussion board:
Next stop: police state
Why should the police have the right to track anyone without a warrant? What probable cause do they have to do this?
There is an implied guarantee of privacy in the Constitution. The Court has already ruled that there is.
What you’re advocating is nothing more than an outright police state. I don’t think that is compatible with American ideals or the founders ideals at all...
It’s actually just disgusting...
--affableman
The payoff from tracking is negligible
I disagree.
GPS tracking is an excellent tool for law enforcement to possibly obtain valuable information and such use is not intrusive. In the real world, the police don’t generally investigate ordinary citizens who aren’t under suspicion. Tracking is little more than monitoring, an activity that may or may not provide any beneficial information.
When I’m in public, I’m aware that my presence may be recorded by a camera, or that someone may be watching my movements, whether it be private investigator, a cop, or any private citizen. The police can follow me in my car all day long if they wish.
A GPS simply tracks a car’s movements. It would be up to the cops or DA to prove who was actually driving the car.
On the world stage he United States is the furthest thing from a police state, so fears of a totalitarian state forming are irrational.
-- marmull1
How come it doesn’t work the other way around?
Curiously enough, if we asked lawmakers, who work for us, if it’s ok to tape their calls and video their offices day and night they’d tell us no. Scandal, corruption, bribery and worse are making a disaster of our country but we cannot take these measures to ensure their honesty. However, you are under surveillance at McDonalds.
The real problem is, it starts with gps on a car but it never stops there. Give up freedom after freedom and one day you have none. I’m quite certain with prisons bursting to overcrowding that police seem to be making arrests just fine as they are.
Today, you lose the right to move around freely, tomorrow they redefine ‘criminal’ to include your particular minority. Open your eyes.
--sgreco
Dissolve political parties
They’re working on killing the whole thing. Except those parts that protect the 1%. Those sections will be expanded. In fact they already are, in practice. They’re letting the Constitution shrivel and die.
Everyone who ever fought or died for this country has been betrayed. Their effort was meaningless unless we put a stop to this. Happy Veteran’s Day. It’s no different than if an alien invasion of pigs have taken over government to steal from everyone below the top 1%. Even MULTI-millionaires are being screwed. That’s how bad it’s gotten, and it’s getting accelerating.
Obama and these scummy Republicans populating both parties in DC don’t work FOR them, they ARE them. The unemployment figures are cooked to keep us in the delusion things are not as bad as they really are.
The only way to stop it is to shed ourselves of party affiliation. That’s what keeps the scam going, seeing one side as the bad guys who have to be defeated by the other side. They’re both sides of one coin.
Recruit and fund independents who pledge to undo every evil thing the 2-party cabal has done and is doing to us. That’s what’s necessary, getting inside the building where the laws are written, which is also where the crimes of the police state have been and are being formulated.
--craigbhill
*Spelling errors in the above comments have been corrected.
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--Julia Gabrick