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Court rules warrants are required for GPS tracking
Posted by Tara Swaminatha on Tuesday, September 16 @ 14:33:47 EDT News
A Washington state Superior Court judge ruled earlier this week that installation of a GPS tracking device on a suspect's car requires a warrant. The case, State v. Jackson, is apparently the country's first ruling on law enforcement use of GPS tracking devices. (*Added 9/21/03 - apparently there were two earlier rulings on tracking devices. See Comment #2 below)

The defendant, Jackson, was convicted of murdering his 9-year-old daughter in 1999. Jackson challenged the validity of the warrant authorizing police to use GPS to track his car. Jackson argued that the warrant should not have been issued based solely on the belief that he might return to the scene of the crime. The prosecutors argued that a warrant was unnecessary because tracking a suspect's vehicle by using GPS is no diffferent from trailing a vehicle in a police cruiser.

The court found that 24-hour, uninterrupted surveillance by GPS is different than tailing a suspect and therefore requires a warrant. The court further ruled that the warrant obtained by the police in this case was valid as issued.

The ACLU applauded the court's decision citing its belief that "tracking a person's movements by GPS is highly intrusive."

The Washington Post reports the Spokane County Deputy Prosecutor is satisfied that Jackson's conviction was upheld. The Deputy Prosecutor also cited this case as an expansion of criminals' privacy rights.
 
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Re: Court rules warrants are required for GPS tracking (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Tuesday, September 16 @ 16:37:28 EDT
Part of the court's decision was based on the difficulty a law enforcement unit would have in mounting a conventional surveillance that matched the GPS units 24/7 tracing capability. This is where part of the substantial difference lay. Effectively the court was saying that it was a conventional tail, just a hyper-efficient one, and therefore it required a warrant. What is the cops get better training, manning, and funding and could pull off the same level of tracing using cars and binoculars? Would they then need a warrant?


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Re: Court rules warrants are required for GPS tracking (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Saturday, September 20 @ 15:58:44 EDT
It's not the first time. Declan McCullagh blogged two previous cases (see http://www.politechbot.com/p-03452.html [www.politechbot.com]), one from the Nevada Supreme Court in 2002 and the other from the Ninth Circuit in 1999, where the rulings have been in the other direction.


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