Via Sullivan, this tidbit:
Wisconsin police can attach GPS to cars to secretly track anybody’s movements without obtaining search warrants, an appeals court ruled Thursday.
However, the District 4 Court of Appeals said it was “more than a little troubled” by that conclusion and asked Wisconsin lawmakers to regulate GPS use to protect against abuse by police and private individuals.
As the law currently stands, the court said police can mount GPS on cars to track people without violating their constitutional rights — even if the drivers aren’t suspects.
Officers do not need to get warrants beforehand because GPS tracking does not involve a search or a seizure, Judge Paul Lundsten wrote for the unanimous three-judge panel based in Madison.
Prediction: nothing will happen about this until a Wisconsin cop is caught tracking women for personal reasons (thinks his wife/gf is cheating, is stalking a certain woman, etc.), and then there will be enough outrage for the legislature to do something.
The Grand Panjandrum
Nah. Until a lawmaker, or someone related to them, is a victim of this outrageous abrogation of the 4th Amendment will they do anything.
Dennis-SGMM
@The Grand Panjandrum:
See: Harman, Jane.
aimai
The Grand Panjandrum beat me to it. Nothing will be done about this until a Judge or a state senator is affected. policemen have been stalking and even killing their girlfriends and spouses for years without any serious fallout.
aimai
bogart
Orwell would be proud.
Napoleon
I was listening to a podcast yesterday morning of some NPR show (I forget which one) on warrants/searches and cellphones and the guy they had on mentioned a case of a police chief getting caught having the phone company supply him with real time location data for his daughter while she was on a date. That is just one step removed from your “hypothetical”.
gnomedad
If we handcuff the police, the terrorists win.
OT, has Sean Hannity set a date for getting waterboarded yet?
The Saff
@gnomedad
Per KO last night, nothing. He introduces “Oddball” with how many days it’s been since Hannity offered to be waterboarded, how many days since Olbermann took him up on it, how many days it’s been since Hannity hasn’t replied, etc.
I think we’re going on close to three weeks.
Woody
The cry that “if you haven’t done anything wrong, you’ve got nothing to worry about” will begin in 5…4…3…
LeaningTowardUndecided
Does this mean I can put a GPS device on a squad car to find the best doughnut shops in Green Bay?
funluvn
John
re: Prediction
I was thinking that about one sentence into reading this post. Of course that will happen, and soon.
Jay in Oregon
Cue Lee Greenwood…
Tommy
How is this different from having a detective “tail” somebody? New technology same result…
Das Internetkommissariat
it happened in Illinois:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stacy_Peterson#Stacy_Peterson
Punchy
Question — if you happen to find this GPS device, are you legally allowed to remove it? Or are you required to keep it on your car?
This is fucked up. What’s next, cops can spray-paint your car orange to make sure it stands out in traffic? Using the appeals court logic, how is this any different?
Dennis-SGMM
Who’s watching
Tell me, who’s watching
Who’s watching me
I’m just an average man
With an average life
I work from nine to five
Hey, hell, I pay the price
All I want is to be left alone
In my average home
But why do I always feel
Like I’m in the twilight zone
And (I always feel like)
(Somebody’s watching me)
And I have no privacy
Whooooa-oh-oh
(I always feel like)
(Somebody’s watching me)
Tell me, is it just a dream…
Das Internetkommissariat
John, this development is something that has been going on for quite some time and has to be seen in a much larger context.
You should google for the term “Geoslavery” and/or try to get access to this paper here:
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fiel5%2F44%2F26636%2F01188276.pdf&authDecision=-203
Silver Owl
In my opinion this is not like tailing somebody because it requires that the police activate a GPS chip located in a car or cell phone that is not theirs. In essence they have seized private property and activated a GPS chip that is owned by a citizen without a warrant.
They can not plant a GPS chip without also “siezing” usage of private property without a warrant and without permission.
Yep this is going to be a mess.
jibeaux
Punchy, I don’t see that you have anyone could possibly have a legal obligation to leave a GPS doohickey on their car if they find it.
I don’t have any trouble with police doing this WITH a warrant, but it is definitely troublesome without. The difference with physically tailing someone is that with the GPS you can track them secretly, constantly, and easily. I think that as a practical matter this gives the state far greater power than physically tailing or surveilling someone does, even though as a hypothetical, yes, you could follow someone anywhere; they are not equivalent.
Zifnab
I hate to defend this, but – from a functional aspect – what is the difference between GPS tagging someone’s car and assigning a police officer to follow said individual for an indefinite amount of time? There is no law against police surveying or staking out an individual or his vehicle. Hell, there’s no law against a private citizen from surveying or staking out an individual or his vehicle.
If a cop wanted to drive around after work tailing his girlfriend, he would be fully within his rights to do so, unless she came at him with a restraining order. If the cop was using police property for private business or recreation, that would be a violation of the rules on its own merits. But no more so than if he took a police cruiser on a day trip down to the beach or was caught playing solitary (or watching porn) on his desktop computer.
This isn’t a change in law at all. It’s just an upgrade in technology. If you don’t like it, you’ve got a problem with more than just this one ruling.
Dennis-SGMM
@Punchy:
If it’s not illegal to purposefully lose a detective following you in traffic then it’s doubtful that it’s illegal to take the cops’ GPS and attach it to the nearest southbound semi.
Bob In Pacifica
Now, if you find said GPS device and then put it on a car with out-of-state plates, you know, a family passing through on vacation, have you violated the law? Or if you put it on the chief of police’s personal car? Would you be interfering with a police investigation? Can citizens put these thingies on other people’s cars? Why not?
I guess tin foil hats don’t work for this, unless you put the GPS inside the tin foil hat.
Bob In Pacifica
Would it be legal for, say, the boyfriend to put it on his cheating girlfriend’s car? It’s not like he was breaking into her car.
How about the boss putting one on his employee’s car to see if he goes to a bar after work, or if he shops at a rival store?
There’s so much room for abuse of privacy here.
sparky
a car is different because (a) it’s public and (b) it’s already licensed by the state, as are you when you operate it on a public highway. if you want an analogy, it’s like checking the “terms and conditions” box on a web page. you may not like it, but that’s the cost of participation.
i think you can make a good argument that the general public should be free from this kind of snooping absent some good ground, but that’s a different question. the public mind seems highly arbitrary when discriminating between acceptable and unacceptable tracking.
edit: people seem to be conflating public and private here. the state can do things the general public cannot. wiretapping is a pretty straightforward example. yes, the state needs a warrant *cough* but it can do it; AFAIK, it’s never legal for a private party to wiretap another private party.
Krista
As a Geocacher, if I found one of those on my car, I’d stick it in a remote, hard-to-find cache that involves really nasty terrain (swamps, thickets of hawthorne trees, steep climbs). Let them go look for it then.
Svensker
@LeaningTowardUndecided:
LOL
jrg
Won’t someone please think of the children? If you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide. Warrants are objectively pro-terrorist.
Besides the arguments mentioned above, we’ll all be safer if the cops know which door to kick down before they start shooting. I don’t want my dog to get shot because the cops lost track of a demon weed dealer who has a car that looks just like mine.
Punchy
Another question — A city police officer cannot tail a suspect outside his/her jurisdiction, correct? But can the police continue to GPS a suspect’s position into another city? What about another (neighboring, or otherwise) state? Across the Mexican or Canadian border? If not, why not?
That, to me, is the big diff
John PM
Well, there would be no cool TJ Hooker chase sequences when the suspect tries to lose the police. I think we would all be worse of for that.
Seriously, however, I think the judges are wrong about this. I will throw a hypo back at you – how is this different from the police setting up a video camera attached to the outside of your house? Again, there is no “search and seizure,” but the problem with both scenarios is that the police in order to attach the GPS and/or camera, have to trespass onto your property. And yes, they are trespassing because without a warrant they have no right to be there.
Dennis-SGMM
@Punchy:
Maybe in your state. Here in California, all peace officers are sworn to the state. A cop from San Francisco can legally write me a ticket here in Los Angeles if he or she sees fit to do so.
Zifnab
@Silver Owl:
Um… what? That’s like saying you can’t mount a security camera without “siezing” the usage of the area surveyed. I’ll agree that activating a chip in someone’s phone would be a big problem, on par with tapping the phone line without a warrant.
I just don’t understand what is so hard about getting a warrant for a suspect. “Judge, we have this guy on record saying he’s going to buy weed. We would like to have him followed.” Who is going to say no to that? This seems so routine it’s almost trivial. Hell, break out the fancy technology and submit your request via text message. The judge can have the request approved between golf swings.
Halteclere
Actually I predict that nothing will happen about this until a jealous wife/mistress places one of these devices on a cop’s or politician’s car.
Certain toll road authorities have business rules stating that if someone pays their toll in cash, even if they have a transponder on board, all records of the transponder read – which means all records identifying that vehicle – are deleted from the system. In the industry we call it the “politician’s mistress rule” because, supposedly, some politician in New Jersey or New York was caught having an affair mostly because his toll records showed him repetitively crossing a toll bridge late at night nowhere near where he worked. And near where the suspected mistress lived.
Zifnab
@John PM:
It’s not. But that doesn’t make the latter case illegal either. Public officials can set up video cameras anywhere they damn well please. That’s why red-light cameras are legal.
gnomedad
@jibeaux:
Exactly. There is at least a fundamental resource limit in personally tailing someone; not so with GPS.
Can the cops tail someone indefinitely without a warrant? If you find out you are being tailed, can you challenge it?
jibeaux
@Zifnab:
Public officials could not set up a video camera attached to your house, Zif. They can set it up on public property or other private property with permission with a view of your house so they can watch you come out of it, but I’m pretty sure it would be considered a taking to attach a video camera to your house.
Dennis-SGMM
@Zifnab:
I believe that they have to obtain permission to set up surveillance cameras on private property. They can set up red light cameras wherever they want because the traffic signal is city property.
gnomedad
@jibeaux:
… or a GPS to your car?
jibeaux
e.g. Supreme Court held that placing cable boxes and wires on private property did constitute a taking that required compensation.
John PM
There is a difference between red light cameras, which are set up on public property, and my hypo, in which the police attach a video camera to the outside of your house (private property) so that they can see in. Again, without a warrant, the police are trespassing.
BTW, red light cameras are a major pet peeve of mine. I think all of this technology for law enforcement purposes stems from the fact that police are getting lazy. Regarding red light cameras, if data shows that a particular intersection is dangerous because too many people are running red lights, then put a couple cops out there to direct traffic
Halteclere
How long will it be before someone develops a “GPS Tarball Gun” that the police can carry? During a car chase the police shoot a GPS device embedded in a ball of tar or some other gooey substance (doesn’t have to be very big) at the car, then follows the offender at a safe distance and safe speed until the suspect stops or runs out of gas. All police in an area would know where the suspect was, so there would be no need to continue a high-speed chase. And the faster the suspect drove the quicker he’d (or she!) would come near a new officer.
Hell, I need to patent this idea if it hasn’t already happened.
jibeaux
@gnomedad:
What’s actually bothersome about it to me is not the physical presence of the GPS, which is probably nowhere you would easily find it, but of course what it can do — but I think it’s a legal angle that could be a successful argument under the same thinking as the cable box case.
jibeaux
@John PM:
Ooh, you’ve got a double-unconstitutional hypo there, then. You have a reasonable expectation of privacy inside your house.
gnomedad
I think this is a good excuse to plug David Brin’s The Transparent Society.
bago
Q:
1> How is targeted data collection not a search?
2> How are google spiders not a search?
3> How are site logs not a search?
A:
1> It’s a search. As soon as you target an actor or series of actors as a subset of a data set you are executing a search.
2> They are an indexing operation. Technically not a search, but as soon as any query hits the indexes and extracts a set, it’s a search. (Implementation detail).
3> Site Logging is not a search because there is no targeting component, apart from the logical requirement that you can only log requests for information from people that have requested information. However, remitting these records to a third party inherently makes them searchable, and any remittance of said logs must be considered a search, as all functional control of the data is relinquished with the data.
GPS tagging of a vehicle is a search under all three rules. It is targeted data collection, a search is made against the collected data, it extracts a data set, and the second party has no functional control of the data collection, inherently making it a data collection from a party not involved in the transaction without the consent of all parties. You could make a public spaces argument if the data collection device did not record anything that did not happen on private property, but there are fairness rules (large property owners vs renters) arguments you could make against that, in addition to fairness arguments to be made about the targeting of collection data made above and of course plausible deniability arguments to be made for any gaps when not recording in public spaces, to work hand in hand with a “reasonable expectation of privacy”.
John PM
Is there a cure for that? :)
gnomedad
@jibeaux:
I completely agree. So long as the intended result require some form of physical trespass, there is at least that basis for challenging it. When it gets to the point that public surveillance cameras are so ubiquitous that you can be tracked by some sort of AI, or virtually all cars are attached to the internet as a feature, then we’ll have a different kind of problem.
YellowJournalism
And it will have to be a cop, because if some jealous wife or husband does it, then the incident will be excused as just some crazy, random act. If a cop or other official does it, there’s enough of a scandal for people to actually sit up and take notice.
As much as I agree that people in general are getting lazy on the job, I think this one comes down to money rather than police laziness. Red light cameras are quite lucrative, and the argument is that they make the intersections safer without having to take manpower away from the “real crimes”. Yet, whenever they talk about installing a red light camera in some new area, you hear about all these studies that show the cameras do little to affect people running red lights. In fact, I often hear the argument that more people are likely to get into accidents when trying to get through the light.
The thing I don’t like about them is that they don’t take things like weather into consideration. I know a lot of people up here in Alberta who have slid into the intersection on an icy day without having much control over the situation. It’s either slide in and get a ticket, or cause an accident trying in vain to avoid it.
shortstop
The entrepreneur in me sees an opportunity for marketing GPS-sweeping devices. I’m going to need a little help with the technology…
Woody
Imho, all official surveillance is a tool of sup/opp/repression.
The State ALWAYS abuses its power.
Woody
Radar detecting devices are “illegal” in a lot of places, nest paw?
Balconesfault
@John PM:
Good point – and hasn’t it already been deemed illegal for the police to use infrared cameras to detect what’s happening inside a home without a warrant?
NonyNony
@John PM:
Great idea! How much can I put you down for in tax increases to pay for the extra cops that will be sitting at the intersections?
In fact, technology isn’t being added because cops are “lazy”, it’s getting added for the same reason technology is being added everywhere – solutions now exist for problems that didn’t exist before. Police have a budget just like any other service and people don’t want to pay for it. So if you show the police a cheap solution to a problem, they’re going to latch onto it just like anyone else would.
Now I’m not a fan of red-light cameras mostly because they have no judgement – there may be times when it’s actually the safer choice to go through the yellow/red light rather than try to stop and a cop on the scene can make a judgment call about whether what you did was appropriate or not. I’m also not a big fan of Orwellian Big Brother ideas like cameras watching every street corner. But it’s perfectly understandable that the police would want to focus their efforts on more important things that ticketing jackasses for running a red light and thinking that if they can automate the jackass ticketing process they can worry about other things instead.
gex
So many problems are caused by assuming a 1:1 car/person ratio. I’d hate like hell to be convicted of ANYTHING based on proof that my car was in a certain location. That does not actually constitute proof beyond a reasonable doubt that I was the driver or that I was there when the car was.
Balconesfault
@shortstop: Was already thinking the same thing.
But someone’s way ahead of us.
bago
@shortstop: You can’t really sweep for a GPS receiving unit (without doing a full em scan for anything inducting currents in-time to gps signals), but you can easily look for intentional broadcasts of data on radio that are easily distancable and triangulatable. The only downside would be if the device just kept a record of your travels and then made a burst transmission at random intervals. This means that you could only catch them if the burst cooked off when you were listening. Since you don’t know the freq ahead of time, and you can’t assume a constant freq, you can’t put 2 and 2 ahead of time to screen/jam false positives. You could come close with a really expensive short range 2 antenna solution, but without careful tuning it could go off every time your blinker goes off.
If you wanted to be real sneaky you could set the bug transmitter to only broadcast low power bursts to a super local antenna (placed just feet away from the car at some point the bug is known to travel over with any regularity) and tune it to only go during high noise events.
Balconesfault
@NonyNony:
Nor are many in the Texas legislature.
ComradeDread
It’s already illegal in some states for a private citizen to attach a GPS device to someone’s vehicle, so if a crazy SO did it to a cop, there probably wouldn’t be an uproar.
The only way I can see any laws getting passed to change this situation would be if it does happen to a politician or a member of his family.
bago
@Balconesfault:
Three of those bulletpoints make me think the product is crap.
First one: Works on both L1 and L2 (most similar models only work on L1, ours sends a frequency range blocking all known tracking devices).
Useless against freq burst transmissions.
Automatic assumptions of transmission frequencies. If you broadcast at a freq not within those narrow parameters, it’s just whistlin dixie.
Second: Plugs Directly into Cigarette Lighter Socket.
Small size (85 x 20 x 75 mm), and can be ran 24/7.
Does no good against temporal burst transmissions. Doesn’t work when your car is off. The bug still will.
Thid and most importantly: Will not interfere with OEM Navigation.
Means it does not interfere with the reception of GPS radio waves. This means it does not jam GPS, by definition. Might as well install an AM radio jammer that says it does not interfere with AM radio.
Stoic
Bad comparison. First, said cop would be acting outside the scope of his job and for personal reasons (and thereby, not doing police business) and second, I didn’t know it was illegal to gps your own car. Unless, you mean it was an estranged husband with a protection order against him, then he’d be acting illegally anyway. (And yes, a police officer with a protection order probably wouldn’t be a police officer for long.)
gex
Not only is FREEDOM (TM) not free, it isn’t even freedom anymore. FREEDOM (TM) is to freedom as cheez is to cheese.
I fully expect
this Supreme Courtcurrent trends in jurisprudence to rule that the authorities can put any monitoring device they want anywhere in your digestive tract. You see, there’s this tunnel that goes completely through you, so it is more like the space that you are surrounding than it is part of you. The 4th Amendment need not apply to your rear end.bago
@gex: Search warrant my ass!
theo
So what happens if I discover the device the cop placed on my vehicle and break it into tiny pieces?
Do I get charged with destroying government property?
MobiusKlein
Isn’t the big difference between GPS units and tailing individuals a matter of scale? Putting GPS units allows the government to track anybody, at any time, all the time on a massive scale. You could even see who associates with who by cross-referencing different streams.
It’s just the creeping totalitarianism that bugs us.
NotACop
I’m going to start attaching GPS tracking devices to police cars. I don’t need a warrant, right?
Brachiator
@Zifnab:
Apples and rutabagas. I suppose that you could drive around tailing your girlfriend all day long, but it’s got nothing to do with your “right” to be creepy. But the ruling applies to a cop putting a GPS on a person’s car as part of his job. And while it may not be strictly illegal, the idea of a cop putting a device on a person’s car without any need to demonstrate that it is for some investigative purpose is troubling.
Or are you trying to invoke the dubious principle, “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.”
Odd. There are rules against using police department resources to watch porn, sometimes with some serious sanctions.
Sometimes the upgrade in technology makes all the difference in the world. It is one thing for a cop to stand outside someone’s home and hear a conversation wafting from an open window. It’s another thing entirely to point a listening device at the window and monitor the conversation.
Would it be OK for a private citizen to put a GPS device onto a police car? Is it illegal for a private citizen to drive around all day following a policeman as he is working his shift?
Joey Maloney
@YellowJournalism:
Especially if, as has happened in several jurisdictions, after installing the camera the yellow light timing is shortened (in some notorious cases, below NHTSA standards) to pump the revenue.
The simplest way to make an intersection safer is to lengthen the yellow and have a brief all-ways red before green. Thus, the simplest way to make more money off an intersection is to make it less safe.
Guess which way usually wins?
Cris
Now you’re talkin’. Maybe I’d be okay with warrantless GPS tracking if every squad car is required to have its own, publicly findable tracking device. If they always know where I am, I want to know where they are too.
Charity
I wish we’d spend less money on this use and more on using GPS to monitor abusers for violations of their protective orders. What good is a restraining order if the asshole won’t follow it, and lots of police departments don’t have the time, resources or interest to follow up?
“…research found that about one quarter of women who were killed by their domestic abusers already had restraining orders.”
binzinerator
@Dennis-SGMM:
“People call me on the phone I’m trying to avoid
Well, can the people on TV see me or am I just paranoid”
It sounded paranoid then. It sounds almost prudent now.
Who woulda thunk Rockwell would be so prophetic?
KRK
Who will be the first to wrap their car in tinfoil?
sparky
@Charity: thanks for the linky–interesting story, though some of the numbers seem squishy, maybe due to changed reporting standards. i was surprised that 75% of people who are issued a restraining order comply with it. but again, possibly squishy.
MattR
Why stop with cars? Based on this same logic, couldn’t the police tag every piece of clothing with a GPS device? Or how about having one implanted inside a person as part of any future surgery?
If the police are legally allowed to alter someone’s property (their car) without their consent and without a warrant because it is neither a search nor seizure, then shouldn’t the same logic allow the other examples I gave above?
Gravenstone
Oh, Wisconsin is becoming the land of the stupid, as far as legal decisions are concerned. Less than a month ago, our idiot AG decided that it’s A-fucking-okay to openly carry a sidearm on public property. But his decision stemmed from a case of a guy cited for Disorderly Conduct for open carry on private property. I’m still trying to wrap my head around that particular jump of logic. The GPS decision is just more inanity from the Land of the Cheesehead.
shortstop
(Looking around sheepishly, empty Reynolds Wrap box in hand.) Did I jump the gun? Too much, you think?
TenguPhule
Tommy
NY disagrees with WI
ALBANY — It was wrong for a police investigator to slap a GPS tracking device under a defendant’s van to track his movements, the state’s top court ruled today.
Tonal Crow
@Tommy:
It enables cheap, convenient, continuous surveillance, rain or shine, day or night, is far less likely to be detected by the victim, and permits police to track pretty much as many people as they wish. Also, the tracking data comes in a form that’s easy to manipulate and correlate with other data. New technology, huge leap in invasiveness.
It’s long been clear that we need to strengthen the 4th Amendment against pro-tyranny judicial activists. Alas, we have not progressed to the stage at which it would be safe to attempt such an amendment.
asiangrrlMN
@Tonal Crow: Yes, this. I don’t think saying, “It’s new technology” makes it right. I am firmly in the ‘creeping invasion of tyranny’ camp. It’s too Big Brother-ish for me.
Hob
It’s not just about the technology. The technology isn’t new. Sure, to some extent it makes it easier to do more surveillance– even if anyone could afford to hire an extra 2,000 cops just for following cars around, people might notice that. But surely the lack of warrants is a much bigger deal, no? Even if a judge blindly grants every request, at least they have to admit they’re doing it and have some kind of rationale. Otherwise there’s no way in hell this doesn’t turn into a blank check for (a) creepy domestic hobby-stalking and (b) political extortion.
Tonal Crow
@Hob:
The political extortion angle really worries me. This kind of surveillance is rapidly becoming a 1st Amendment issue, since the more the police know about you, the more likely it is that they’ll use some portion of it against you — either in a criminal proceeding, or via a well-placed leak. This is particularly so if you vigorously express some viewpoint they don’t like. GOPers ought to understand this risk, particularly in view of their persecution complex (see, e.g., Maggie Gallagher’s whining about “liberals” treating her hangers-on like “racists”)– but their fascinated worship of authority almost always wins out.
john b
i don’t know if this has been brought up already, but the cop DID have a warrant for the GPS device in this case. the suspect was challenging the warrant and the judge basically said “you don’t even need a warrant so you can’t challenge it”
john b
and a link to the case which shows that the cop had a warrant.
jibeaux
@KRK:
I’m thinking some kind of oil coating. Maybe on a hot day your car would smell like French fries and that would be cool.
asiangrrlMN
@john b: Ah. Got it. Thanks for the clarification. I feel better about the cops having the warrant, but still not great that they didn’t need one.
p.a.
Our work-provided cellphones have a timeclock function where we click on and off duty (and on/off lunch) and active GPS. (Thanks Verizon Wireless) If we are found on the clock without the phones on us or nearby we can be disciplined. Our bosses at the meeting when we were given the phones could not tell us who might have access to our location information. That was 9 months ago, and we still don’t know how many people can access this info. Lawsuits are in progress, and our union business agent is in trouble in the upcoming election because he has done so little to fight this.
The GPS updates our location on a 15 minute schedule. I own a handheld unit that can’t work inside, or even by a window, so I don’t know how accurate these phone units are, or if they are just useful when we are on the road.
I don’t know if other carriers have this ‘service’, but to me we’re one step away from having a chip implanted.