I don’t miss your point. I completely understand your point. But don’t use that bolded part of the case to make your point, because it is talking about something different.
If they had concern enough for a miniscule and negligible amount of electricity to run the thing on, then they also would have or did have the same concern for the power to move it down the road. I suppose you haven’t thought of how utterly useless a GPS that doesn’t move is? Kinda defeats the whole purpose.
I do not find the qualifier “electrical” as in electrical power nor any kind of disqualifier like “but not mechanical” power. Assuming an internal combustion engine, the type of energy produced is mechanical, not electrical. Besides that, while the Supreme Court is not known to always be utterly terse, neither are theyknown for ridiculous redundancies, and so far as I know, you can’t draw power from the electrical system of a vehicle without drawing it from the battery due to the nature of the wiring. All electrical power more or less comes from the battery as it is in the circuit. You want to entirely read out "engine and replace it with “battery” or “alternator” without justification. The court said “…draw power from the engine OR battery.”
Here is an ordinary english dictionary definition of draw as it is used in the sentence:
–verb (used with object)
1.
to cause to move in a particular direction by or as if by a pulling force; pull; drag (often followed by along, away, in, out, or off ).
to bring, take, or pull out, as from a receptacle or source: to draw water from a well.
to bring toward oneself or itself, as by inherent force or influence; attract: The concert drew a large audience.
Please explain your reasoning that they meant and could only have meant"consume electrical energy from the car’s engine."
And then sit around for a while just thinking about the GPS that doesn’t use any power from the engine–getting awfully lonely sitting on the sidewalk after the car drove off without it.
No, I am sure you missed the point.
Pardon me but I’m going to think from the government’s standpoint for a second.
Instead of the slipperly slope people are afraid of (attaching RFIDs on your clothes, really? :dubious: ), I wouldn’t like it if a ruling for the defendant leads anywhere close to the police not being able to track a person using other, legal forms of surveillance. Suppose they use satellites, or another car tailing someone, or whatever, and they make the argument that while the police can track them in one instance, doing so over a period of months constitute this mosaic theory of privacy and that its illegal.
I don’t know about clothes, I haven’t heard enough about that to make up my mind yet, but when you’re in a car driving around in public, and someone attaching a tiny device to your car being still legal, any information they collect should be legal. Look, expectations are different for everyone. This guy expected privacy when he’s driving around. Someone like me does not because I don’t give a damn
With all due respect, you are still missing the point…
I think your argument has a degree of merit. But the power drain would certainly be found to be de minimis (which, by the way, is regularly used as a justification in ceremonial deism cases, for example).
But what you cannot do is make this argument, and claim the court got it wrong when they said:
When the court said this, it is patently clear that they were not talking about power to move. We know this because they said, in the very clause before:
My comment was simply that you bolded the wrong thing. You want to argue it did affect the car’s driving qualities. But it is incredibly obvious what the phrase you bolded referred to. And it isn’t what you are saying. That power can refer to what you are saying is not relevant.
I am not arguing that the GPS caused the car to appreciably underperform in any way that would cause the quality of the experience of driving the car to diminish. I am talking about the energy required to move it which someone must pay for. Since the ONLY kind of energy produced by the engine is mechanical, I believe I bolded the right thing.
Since it is just a question of which part of the phrase we believe the energy would fall under, for the very limited purpose of not going round and round in circles with you I will concede that it could be seen as effecting the performance of the car.
I still would like to understand by what reasoning you insist the court’s language must only fit your narrow view of its meaning, but I guess you’re not gonna do that and I’m not gonna beat a dead horse.
Thanks for the agreement that the argument may have some merit, though.
As far as de minimis goes, as I pointed out to Bricker, it is not a constitutional law doctrine I ever heard of, but I have heard of it in use for, say, tax law. It is always applied to money which might actually exchange hands by my understanding. It has never been used that I am aware of in a sense of a limitation on a right. I haven’t read all the supreme court’s cases, so I could be wrong. If I am wrong I am sure within a reasonable time Bricker will show me a cite.
But if you want to push the issue, if you are saying my argument fails because of the de minimis doctrine, I will also request you cite a precedent.
I would agree if it were a matter of a person hauling around a GPS for the government unwilling, and he then sues the government for the loss of the gasoline and wear and tear. That would be a frivilous lawsuit in my opinion because the only demand is for a very small amount of money. He could also seek declatory judgment and that’s different. But this is an entirely different analysis than a constitutional law question as to what amount of property the governmenet can take without due process of law. I maintain de minimis is not a constitutional law doctrine.
It’s not a limitation on a right. It’s an acknowledgment that some benefits, harms, losses, issues or questions are just too insignificant for the law to concern itself with them.
This is kind of vague. I argue de minimis is not a reason to deny a right. The right remains as large as ever regardless of the amount taken. De minimis is not a limitation on a right.
We are arguing constitutional law here. We are arguing over whether or not a right may be limited on the basis of the de minimis doctrine.
If we were arguing just out of pure logic as to whether there was harm done, and no right was involved, I would be agreeing.
The law indeed does not concern itself with things too samll to be of much impact WHEN AN ACTUAL EXCHANGE of goods or money or another tangible issue is contemplated, not intangibles such as rights.
Please provide a citation that de minimis has an application to constitutional law, rather than some other area of the law, if indeed you also claim that de minimis is a doctrine which can be used to limit a right.
Try it like this:
You don’t have a right to free speech because the content of the speech had too little value. the Government can say you can’t go out in the street and say “Cock-a-doodle-doo” (for no reason at all) because your statement has so little value its not worth arguing over.
You do not have a right to freedom of religion because the value of the religion cannot be quantified and is not worth arguing over.
You do not have the right to assembly if too few people gather.
You do not have a right to bear arms because the weapon is worth too little to bother with.
You do not have a right against troops quartered in your home because they didn’t stay long enough to matter.
You do not have a right to be secure in your person effects and home because these things have too little value–i.e., the government can come in your home without a warrant if the issue arising in their desire to come in is piddling enough.
You do not have a right to not be deprived of your life liberty or property without due process of law if what is taken is so small it is hard to be worth arguing over. (That any scenario involving your life is impossible to arise speaks volumes) (Imagine every government agency being allowed to take 1 cent out of your bowl of pennies containing $1000 until its gone–if one agency can because the amount is too small to argue over, why not all of them?)
Its actually true that the right to a speedy trial includes the right to be free from too swift a trial too; and that if the matter is of small enough consequences (less than six months jail) you don’t have a right to trial by jury. But not because the de minimis doctrine is applied.
Its actually true that you do not have a right to a jury in a civil matter if the amount is less then $20. (I’d argue inflation of the dollar and set that value somewhere higher in today’s dollars.)
You do not have a right to be free of cruel and unusual punishment if it is only a little bit of cruel and unusual punishment. You do not have a right to bail if the bail amount is too small to be quantifiable.
As you can see the application of de minimis to questions of rights under the constitution usually results in absurd results.
No. And even if it were, the lock is not a complex one. The police are ready with a standard set of master keys for common locks on gas caps, and do not damage the lock when the supply the gas.
Now answer the question.
That question has already been answered implicity by the multitude of rulings that have rejected your argument about power stolen for moving the GPS unit about. There are a multitude of federal circuit rulings on warrantless GPS placements, and not a single one supports your “wear and tear” or two microliters of gas theories.
But if you want a cite for the concept of de minimis having constitutional implication, there’s Harlan’s concurrence in Sniadach v. Family Finance Corp, where he makes explicit the assumption in the Court’s opinion that the Fifth Amendment does not reach a de minimis taking.
What the court’s trying to say is that the engine doesn’t power the GPS tracker itself. The GPS tracker isn’t set up so that it needs to draw power from the engine to work. What everybody else here is saying is that the added weight from the GPS is so minimal (like 10-50 grams), that it doesn’t have any real effect on the operation of the car. The amount of gas that would be used to pull the extra weight, even if the tracker were on there for the life of the car, would be so insignificant that it isn’t even worth measuring, and so the court isn’t even going to bother taking it into account as a burden the state is placing on the car’s owner.
[Wanders into thread without reading any of it]
Given the increasing ability of governments to invade privacy, isn’t protecting privacy a good thing?
[Wanders back out of thread]
You just went in a huge circle. I didn’t claim my opinion was the Supreme Court’s opinion. You said my opinion was a poor one, and are supposed to be showing why.
Sniadach does not support you. You take a concurring opinion of 1 justice alone, that did not even say what you said it did, i.e., this is not a fifth amendment case, and tell me it is settled law? this was a 7-1-1 decision. It is the opinion of the 7 that makes caselaw. You need to provide a majority opinion. While Justice Harlan may have felt a de minimis doctrine might be suitable in a civil garnishment case WHERE ACTUAL MONEY IS CHANGING HANDS (like I told you)
the other 8 justices did not agree. If the 7 who made the majority opinion had adopted Harlan’s view, then it would have been Harlan who wrote the majority opinion, but it was Douglas.
You have erred, this citation does not support your claim.
Your “test” is getting silly. The answer is NO. The government may not use his vehicle for their purposes without the target’s permission. I do not know what you are thinking that says the government unlocking the target’s locks cures the problem.
You should know better than to suggest a concurring opinion is the law. It’s the majority’s opinion that matters. What’s next, a dissent?
De minimis is not a constitutional law or criminal law doctrine. All concurrence is dicta and has no force of law.
Try again or admit it is not so.
I am not having any trouble understanding what they are saying or the logic of it. I amrine saying there is no constitutional law doctrine of de minimis.
But just for the fun of playing this game, how many of the myriad government agencies can put their GPS trackers on his vehicle before hauling around the government’s property for them becomes a concern? When it reaches twenty pounds? Fifty?
The government can take NO property, ZERO, without due process of law.
The framers wrote a de minimis standard into civil suits. They obviously knew how to write that in and they said nothing about a de minimis standard in the fifth amendment.
The Supreme Court is wrong but they have been chipping away at the 4th and
5th amendments for some time. The GPS is unconstitutional both under the 4th and 5th amendments, and most likely the 9th and/or 10th as well.
When it interferes with the use of the vehicle? (Hey, and we’ve gotten back to the mosaic again, where one GPS tracker isn’t significant, but maybe 50 points of GPS trackers, each planted by a different agency, would be)
You say that the government can take no property with due process of law, and generally, in principle, I agree with you, but lets say, analogous to this, a census taker comes to your door to give you the census, and then, while he’s walking on your lawn to get to your door, he gets dirt or mud from your lawn in the treads of his shoes, and then leaves your premises. Is that an unlawful taking by the government? It’s your dirt. A government agent is removing it from your premises. But I think, pretty clearly to me, at least, it would be absurd to say the census taker committed a constitutional violation.
Also, check out Pennsylvania v Mimms.
From Perry, btw:
The census taker would not have INTENT to remove your property, nor would it be germaine to his function…he could walk on a sidewalk, pick up no dirt, and still do his job of census data, and I agree of the absurdity. Its when it becomes intentional and necessary to take your property that I have a problem.
BTW my asking the question of how many GPS trackers is the same question as "at what point does it affect the car? In other words, just how much gasoline can they convert to their own use? This may be a mosaic approach again, but this time concerning the fifth amendment and not the fourth.
the quote from Perry is two comments above for my context.
OK let me clarify here. There is a difference between reasoning de minimis and applying the de minimis doctrine. De minimis is not a constitutional law doctrine that stands on its own as a reason to deprive rights under the constitution and is NEVER used that way.
Once the interference with a right is justified by probable cause, weighing various factors may be appropriate. This still does not make de minimis a constitutional law doctrine.
You can have a suit dismissed by pleading de minimis.
The government cannot replace probable cause with the de minimis doctrine and say, with no probable cause whatsoever, that a right is of no concern because the government only violates it in a small way.
Probable cause in most cases may be treated as the equivalent of a warrant. It can substitute for a warrant when taking the time is unfeasible. When it is feasible to get a warrant, the warrant issues on probable cause–i.e., the warrant is a formalization of probable cause. In either case probable cause is a reason justifying the police action.
When weighing one factor against another, the fact that one is minimal is not an application of a doctrine. Its a simple weighing test.
My point is about the use of de minimis reasoning or application of the doctrine where there is no probable cause to think a crime has been committed.
My argument has always assumed a lack of probable cause with a de minimis justification or doctrine substituted instead.
I am sorry if that has not been clear.
There is something wrong with this citation anyway. Terry v. Ohio does not contain the words de minimis, and appears to be an authority within the quote. Is Perry part of the case name? A typo of Terry? Perusal of the thread does not readily reveal it, but I may have missed something. Nevertheless, the full name of the case is idle curiousity as I have assumed for the sake of the argument the quote is a valid S.Ct. majority opinion.
Here the original taking occured with probable cause, but if it hadn’t I’d be complaining, if the original justification for the traffic stop is minimal harm too difficult to quantify to be worthwhile. Once the legitimate taking has occurred, there is no reason to object to moving the suspect for the reason of officer safety. it would be more of an issue if the officer had moved the suspect in an unreasonable way, like taking him to Disneyland from downtown L.A. to interrogate him when the crime has nothing to do with Disneyland.
nevermind the above request for citation clarification. I see now your quote is the Pennsylvania v Mimms case you mentioned earlier.
In Pennsylvania v. Mimms, the Supreme COurt said that asking a driver to step out of the car, while possibly unjustified under the constitution, is a de minimis additional intrusion on his liberty.
Why does that reasoning not run to the question here?
And this dodge you have about “intent” when the census-taker’s shoes track dirt off the property… there’s no intent of the officers to take a microliter of gas. Their intent is to place and run the GPS.
In the final analysis, though, you’re welcome to your pronouncements. It’s clear that the Court disagrees with you, and so it becomes an empty business: you ask for citations, but when they cut against you, you simply declare by fiat that the Supreme Court is wrong.
Well, everyone’s entitled to their opinion. But the Court’s opinions create law, and allow the practice of GPS placement to continue, and your opinions … er… well, I’m sure they do something.
How about tapping someone’s cell phone as long as it was only for the purposes of listening in to conversations conducted in public places?