Yeah, that’s in someone’s house.
Not that a private eye is a government actor but don’t they stalk people all the time?
On the one hand, you don’t want to encourage fishing expeditions because you pissed off a cop. On the other hand they could very well have done this without a warrant if they used an unmarked car.
This “mosaic” right is more concocted as the “penumbra” rights.
That’s really not the point. You have no constitutional right of privacy in public. Now if this guy was travelling on private roads and underground tunnels, then they would probably have to turn off the bug but this guy was driving on public roads. THere may be some level of electronic surveillance that goes to far but this is not it.
Weed in the window is evidence of a crime (though a stupid thing to be illegal)
Driving my car anywhere is no evidence of anything.
You are really confusing the concepts here, Mozart1220, which is making it difficult.
And the man in this case isn’t being charged with driving his car anywhere.
The reason “weed seen through the window” was mentioned, Mozart1220, was to highlight the idea that even though your home is generally private, if a cop can stand in a public place and see evidence of a crime, that evidence is admissible against you. If that same cop were to sneak inside your house and only then saw the weed, it would not be admissible against you.
By the same token, your car is parked on the street, or on the driveway visible from the street. And so the location of your car is public. You can’t complain if the police use the location of your car as evidence of a crime, because as long as your car is driving around on public streets where anyone can see it, you can’t say that the car’s location is private.
And if a cop wants to follow me around and visually note the location of my vehicle, that is admissable. But a line is crossed when the cop attaches something, anything, to my vehicle. He has no probable cause at that time, so he is violating my personal property by the mere act of attaching the tracking device. Is there no limit to what cops can attach to your car in order to monitor your activities? Can they install a webcam? After all, it is just transmitting what is plainly visible through the windows.
There’s a problem with your argument, and that is that the courts don’t agree with you.
[ul][li]US v. Garcia, 474 F.3d 994, 997 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 128 US 291 (2007)[/li][li]US v. Marquez, 605 F.3d 604 (8th Cir. 2010)[/li][li]US v. Pineda-Moreno, 591 F.3d 1212 (9th Cir. 2010)[/li][li]US v. McIver, 186 F.3d 1119 (9th Cir. 1999), cert. denied, 528 U.S. 1177 (2000)[/li][/ul]
Some state courts have thrown out the information generated by the GPS (People v. Weaver, 12 NY 3d 433 (NY Court of Appeals 2009), State v. Jackson, 76 P. 3d 217 (Wash. 2003)) but none has done so because any personal property was “violated.”
But if you’re driving down the highway at 55, a webcam can see much more of your car than anyone driving beside you could see. So I would say no.
I don’t think the theory is bad. A pretty girl out in public can expect me to see her. No harm, no foul. If I’m there every time she leaves her house, however, that is stalking.
Well, that’s exactly what the DC Circuit’s panel said. And I agree that it’s not crazy. It’s just new.
And therefore not to be trusted. 
Your “driving at 55” standard is unrealistically narrow. If probable cause attaches when a cop looks into a parked car and sees evidence of a crime, by the courts standard, installing a webcam sees no more than a foot cop on the beat.
The courts have generally agreed that a GPS’s evidence would be inadmissible if the car entered a large tract of private land. So there’s the analogy to the webcam. A webcam that captured what could be seen from outside the car while the car was at rest would probably be permissible. But when the car was at highway speeds, no beat cop could possibly look inside it in any great detail.
So just to be crystal clear, it would be permissable for the court to allow the placement of a webcam in my car, without probable cause, for the purpose of collecting video evidence while the car is at rest?
As long as the webcam saw only what could be seen from outside the car? I can’t think of a constitutional bar to that, no.
That will come as a shock to horny teenagers everywhere, I am sure.
But seriously, if that is the case, then I support the DC Circuit Court, and I hope it goes to the Supreme Court so a binding precedent is set. We need a broader definition of privacy to limit the power of government to peer into our backseats with every new technology that comes along. I support this kind of judicial activism. The Constitution is not a suicide pact.
Can the government follow you around without a warrant? Yes. Can they follow you into your home without a warrant? No. They may not introduce a bug to your home without a warrant. Assuming that your car is your home or you park it in your garage, they are trespassing unless they have a warrant.
The OP’s question is: does the constitution address this? No, it does not have a discussion of bugs and trespassing. It has some general rules in the 4th amendment that require interpretation by courts. The OP implies that without a specific prohibition, it’s okay. No. The constitution was designed to be interpreted by courts and not a document designed to be strictly construed by the text, which is general in nature. While it is debated whether the legislature or courts were originally supposed to interpret the constitution with the final word, since Marbury v. Madison the country has agreed that the courts have the final word.
This isn’t really judicial activism; it’s more akin to a question of first impression. The idea is a novel one: any single trip is public and unobjectionable; the total picture painted by all trips is (or should be) private. This isn’t a case of deciding contrary to existing law so much as it is making new law in the absence of any binding precedent.
It’s true that DC’s decision cuts against every other circuit to consider the issue, but so what? Decisions of sister circuits are persuasive but not binding.
This is not the privacy issue I find most egregious. If the cops want to follow me around and compile that total picture of all my trips, that is not a violation of my constitutional rights. Despite all your legal precendents, I disagree with the courts when they rule that police can place an electronic monotoring device of any kind on my vehicle without probable cause. The courts decided wrongly. If the courts cannot find a constitutional basis on which to block such intrusive surveillance, then legislation or amending the Constitution is called for.
“We conclude that a warrant was required here because the initial installation of the particular device clearly constituted a seizure under art. 14. The installation required not only entry by the police into the minivan for one hour, but also operation of the vehicle’s electrical system, in order to attach the device to the vehicle’s power source and to verify that it was operating properly. Moreover, operation of the device required power from the defendant’s vehicle, an ongoing physical intrusion. See Karo, supra at 729 (Stevens, J., dissenting) (insertion of beeper in vehicle is physical invasion and seizure because it infringes on owner’s exclusionary right).”
“In addition, and apart from the installation of the GPS device, the police use of the defendant’s minivan to conduct GPS monitoring for their own purposes constituted a seizure. When an electronic surveillance device is installed in a motor vehicle, be it a beeper, radio transmitter, or GPS device, the government’s control and use of the defendant’s vehicle to track its movements interferes with the defendant’s interest in the vehicle notwithstanding that he maintains possession of it. The owner of property has a right to exclude it from “all the world,” see Karo, supra at 729 (Stevens, J., dissenting), and the police use “infringes that exclusionary right.” Id. The interference occurs regardless whether the device draws power from the vehicle and regardless whether the data is transmitted to a monitoring computer. It is a seizure not by virtue of the technology employed, but because the police use private property (the vehicle) to obtain information for their own purposes.”
As stated, in gathering and using the GPS data by means of the minivan, the police used the defendant’s minivan for government purposes, and did so without the defendant’s knowledge or authorization. Tracking of the GPS data by the police constituted use and control of the defendant’s minivan by them, and interfered with the defendant’s right to exclude others from his vehicle."
Commonwealth v. Connolly, 454 Mass. 808.
The Massachusettes Supreme Court agrees with you, at least in regards to the Mass. Constitution.