Well, The Nine are going to take a stab at it.
Accorinf to yesterday’s order list, the Supreme Court granted cert to US v. Jones, and in addition to the appealed question about the mosaic theory of privacy, they added a question that goes right to the heart of your disquiet, Fear:
Well then, what’s Sauron’s position on the matter?
That the Nazgul need no warrant. 
Well, I think Scalia wrote for the majority in Kyllo v. United States that thermal imaging was an invasion of privacy. Recently Scalia was with the majority overturning the ban on sales of violent video games to minors. It seems he is saying the underlying protections of the constitution supersede new technology that was not imagined at the time. (this is more fully explored here)
Of course who knows but given those rulings I would guess Sauron would be opposed to GPS tracking without a warrant.
Frankly I see GPS tracking without a warrant as no different than a cop climbing into the trunk of your car and taking note of where you go. Pretty sure that would be deemed illegal without a warrant.
They were just tracking the car, cars don’t have any rights. If they put a bug on him, that would be different, but they just put it on the car, so they were tracking the car even when he wasn’t in it. And if the car were stolen by terrorists, this could be a major advantage for law enforcement. Heck, why not put tracking devices in all cars, since there are no legal issues to be all dispositive about! But not bicycyles. That would be silly.
So if they put a camera in your house that would be ok because houses do not have rights?
Yes, he has taken those positions.
But since he is always evil and wrong, those positions must be wrong.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
It would not be a violation to take a picture of the exterior of your house or note its location.
I don’t see how tracking public movements, made out in the open, can be a violation of privacy. It’s really no different than tailing a car or tracking it from a helicopter.
I do think any kind of monitoring device designed to gather information from inside the car would raise a much more significant challenge, but a device which simply tracks where the vehicle goes is probably going to stand up. I don’t think there’s an expectation to privacy as to where you publicly drive your car.
Seems to me tracking its citizens’ whereabouts is about as central to a police state as you can get.
If they want to take a picture of your car that’s fine. If they want to note its location because they just drove by it that is fine too. Tracking where you go is another matter. If they feel you are of enough interest to tail then they can do that. Slapping GPS on peoples’ cars with no warrant…well, where is the limit? Why not just put them on everyone’s car with a unique ID code? Anytime the police want to know where you are they can pull it up.
Every federal circuit in the country agrees with you, except DC. DC’s theory is that any single individual trip is fair game, but the total picture created by assembling information about all your trips in a month is not. Thus, “mosaic theory of privacy.” The individual piece of a mosaic is a chip of colored glass. But the full mosaic is a depiction of, say, the transfiguration of Jesus. Knowing the chip of colored glass is very different than knowing what a couple thousand of them, arranged in a particular way, represent.
I think that “mosaic” theory is going to have a snowball’s chance in this Court. It opens up way too much of a can of worms and raises way too many issues about how law enforcement can gather information. At what point does a compilation of legally derived, public information become a “mosaic?” I think it’s a specious theory, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see a 9-0 ruling in favor of the government here.
I would, although I do agree with you that it won’t ultimately be upheld. BUt I’d take bets against a 9-0 decision.
If it is not an invasion of privacy and the SCOTUS overturns it does that mean you can slap one of these on your girlfriend’s car to track her whereabouts?
In our modern Police State, funded by regulations that make anyone guilty of crimes any time they are questioned, the only correct answer you can give the SS is silence. Pleading for your life will do you no good. Explaining your situation will be used against you. If the laws are there to protect you, from who? You all know that answer, and it is not criminals. Is that a helicopter that has been following me around all day? Stinking D.C. can not afford satellite time? Personally, I am more afraid of our local cops than the gangs that control Atlanta and the Fulton Co. Jail in Atlanta. Read about the shooting there from a gun smuggled in with cell phones and drugs by Jail Officers. Three arrested by the Feds who are more scary to me than the SS of Germany. The SS are a story in history, the Feds are killers amongst us. Sound paranoid? I hope so. Look up officers who have broken the law while on duty. Look up for they are above us and the law. They always get off with pay. Privacy is a myth, just like the Constitution.
As long as this has come lurching from its grave in search of braaaaiiins! (but only on probable cause, and in compliance with precedent) – might I observe what it is that the Fourth Amendment does address that may be relevant? I.e., this was a warrantless surveillance, or whatever noun you wish to attach to the GPS monitoring.
Was there fear the suspect would abscond to Abkhazia or something during the time it took to see a judge? Hardly. I would be much more comfortable with such monitoring in accord with a warrant issued by a judge whose job it is to balance the needs of police investigators against the citizens’ defined rights to some degree of privacy in their daily affairs. (Note that I’m not advancing a nebulous ‘right to privacy’ not spelled out in the Constitution, but the Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights which are enumerated.
I confess to being of two minds about the constitutionality of GPS monitoring of a suspect; what I’m firm on, and really concerned about here, is the growing tendency to disregard the Fourth Amendment call for warrants before searches, seizures, and related behaviors to be the norm, and warrantless searches and seizures to be the exception in times where quick action by the police is called for and there is not time to secure a warrant.
Perhaps you might address this concern, Bricker?
Well, the existence of a right to privacy here is kind of key, since there are two possible areas of complaint. The Court has asked the parties to brief the warrant issue as applied to the placement of the GPS, and of course is also considering the mosiac privacy idea.
I don’t realy see a seizure here. I don;t see a search here either. So i don’t see the Fourth Amendment implication.
Sorry to revive this but now at least one court has said it is fine to track your spouse with GPS. Whether you could track a person you are not married to (e.g. your boyfriend/girlfriend) I am unsure but the little the article tells suggests the court thinks tracking you on public streets is fine.
Do you believe a wiretap constitutes either a “search” or a “seizure”?
I do believe there is a fifth amendment taking of property problem here. Someone has to pay to haul around the tracking device. However miniscule it is, however inexpensive, the device is added weight to the car, which will result in increased gasoline usage and increased wear and tear on the car.
I do not think that the government can convert the use of the defendant’s property to their use without a warrrant.
If this is legal, what would stop the government from attaching a trailer full of surveillance equipment and agents to someone’s car? (Besides the obvious, that the defendant would notice. For the sake of this argument, let’s presume the defendant is too stupid to notice the trailer, or better yet, that the government has substituted their trailer for one of his, and the two trailers look alike.)
I say the government cannot convert your property to their use without due process of law.
(How do you guys get the quote within a quote thing to happen?)