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kiknkorea
Joined: 16 May 2008
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 Posted: Sat Oct 16, 2010 6:58 pm Post subject: FBI Puts GPS Device in Students Car |
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SAN FRANCISCO � Yasir Afifi, a 20-year-old computer salesman and community college student, took his car in for an oil change earlier this month and his mechanic spotted an odd wire hanging from the undercarriage.
The wire was attached to a strange magnetic device that puzzled Afifi and the mechanic. They freed it from the car and posted images of it online, asking for help in identifying it.
Two days later, FBI agents arrived at Afifi's Santa Clara apartment and demanded the return of their property � a global positioning system tracking device now at the center of a raging legal debate over privacy rights.
One federal judge wrote that the widespread use of the device was straight out of George Orwell's novel, "1984".
"By holding that this kind of surveillance doesn't impair an individual's reasonable expectation of privacy, the panel hands the government the power to track the movements of every one of us, every day of our lives," wrote Alex Kozinski, the chief judge of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a blistering dissent in which a three-judge panel from his court ruled that search warrants weren't necessary for GPS tracking.
But other federal and state courts have come to the opposite conclusion. |
This is scary stuff. Even if you agree they should be able to do surveillance in a public place, a person's car is private property.
They don't have any business attaching things to someone's car!
Full article-http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101016/ap_on_re_us/us_gps_tracking_warrants
Video-http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local/south_bay&id=7715312 |
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comm
Joined: 22 Jun 2010
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| Posted: Mon Oct 18, 2010 6:32 am Post subject: |
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| I dunno. Based on history, it's inevitable that someday an oppressive government will come to power in the US (through election, invasion, assassination, etc). The only question is whether or not the 2nd amendment will have been repealed beforehand. Incidents like this might remind people that's it's good to have the power to oppose the government... just in case. |
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The Happy Warrior
Joined: 10 Feb 2010
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| Posted: Mon Oct 18, 2010 8:38 am Post subject: |
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This is a 4th Amendment issue.
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Amendment IV: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated . . . ." |
This is split among the Appeals Courts. The 9th Circuit decided Pineda-Moreno relying heavily on McIver.
Quoting Karo, McIver refused to acknowledge that placing a tracking device on the undercarriage of a vehicle was a seizure under the 4th Amendment.
| US v. Karo wrote: |
| A "seizure" of property occurs when "there is some meaningful interference with an individual's possessory interests in that property." [citing Jacobsen, 466 U.S. at 113, 104 S.Ct. 1652]. Although the can may have contained an unknown and unwanted foreign object, it cannot be said that anyone's possessory interest was interfered with in a meaningful way. At most, there was a technical trespass on the space occupied by the beeper. |
This is a very confused view of the 4th Amendment. We've gone back to the Olmstead trespass standard of 4th Amendment review resoundingly rejected by Katz. In 1928, Olmstead held that the government could tap phone lines because it was not a literal trespass. Katz reviewed the constitutionality of government law enforcement officials posting a listening device on the top of a telephone booth.
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| We conclude that the underpinnings of Olmstead and Goldman have been so eroded by our subsequent decisions that the "trespass" doctrine there enunciated can no longer be regarded as controlling. The Government's activities in electronically listening to and recording the petitioner's words violated the privacy upon which he justifiably relied while using the telephone booth and thus constituted a "search and seizure" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. The fact that the electronic device employed to achieve that end did not happen to penetrate the wall of the booth can have no constitutional significance. |
We've come full circle with 4th Amendment doctrine. We simply must recognize that automobile stops are different from GPS tracking. Officers are allowed to stop your vehicle with reasonable suspicion (something less than probable cause) to check your license and registration. Since cars require a license, the government has an interest in assuring that everyone who drives is licensed to drive. But even then, officers cannot stop you for no reason whatsoever.
Attaching a GPS device to the car is fundamentally different from a highway stop. There's no license check justification there. The current case law is asking whether you can place the GPS on the car in the driveway or does the car have to be out on the street. This is the wrong inquiry! The courts need to get away from the narrow precedents and go back to the Constitution. In today's America, cars are necessary parts of life. Indeed, when you attach a GPS to a vehicle, you are violating the right of the people to be secure in their persons. |
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conrad2
Joined: 05 Nov 2009
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| Posted: Mon Oct 18, 2010 1:03 pm Post subject: |
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| Screw the FBI. You attach something to my car, it becomes my property. The car owner should have just destroyed the tracking device. For all he or the mechanice knew, it could have been some kind of bomb. |
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