Monday, May 09, 2011

"Battle Brews Over FBI's Warrantless GPS Tracking":
The devices, however, have become one of the most divisive Fourth Amendment issues facing courts around the country. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in California ruled last year that using a GPS tracker was no different than physically trailing a suspect in public, and that such surveillance was not protected by the Fourth Amendment, even if agents placed the device on a suspect’s car while it was parked in his driveway.

But Judge Alex Kosinski [sic], in the dissenting opinion, called the use of GPS trackers without a court order "straight out of George Orwell's novel 1984" and said they give government “the power to track the movements of every one of us, every day of our lives."
(Typo alert: Judge Kozinski's name should be spelled with a "z", not an "s".)

Related article, "How to Check Your Car for a GPS Tracker".