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 WI court upholds un-warranted GPS tracking by police 
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 Post subject: WI court upholds un-warranted GPS tracking by police
PostPosted: Tue May 12, 2009 2:43 pm 
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[url=http://www.chicagotribune.com/technology/chi-ap-wi-gps-police,0,5867383.story]Wisconsin court upholds GPS tracking by police
[/url]


By RYAN J. FOLEY | Associated Press Writer
2:42 PM CDT, May 7, 2009

MADISON, Wis. - Wisconsin police can attach GPS to cars to secretly track anybody's movements without obtaining search warrants, an appeals court ruled Thursday.

However, the District 4 Court of Appeals said it was "more than a little troubled" by that conclusion and asked Wisconsin lawmakers to regulate GPS use to protect against abuse by police and private individuals.

As the law currently stands, the court said police can mount GPS on cars to track people without violating their constitutional rights -- even if the drivers aren't suspects.

Officers do not need to get warrants beforehand because GPS tracking does not involve a search or a seizure, Judge Paul Lundsten wrote for the unanimous three-judge panel based in Madison.

That means "police are seemingly free to secretly track anyone's public movements with a GPS device," he wrote.

One privacy advocate said the decision opened the door for greater government surveillance of citizens. Meanwhile, law enforcement officials called the decision a victory for public safety because tracking devices are an increasingly important tool in investigating criminal behavior.

The ruling came in a 2003 case involving Michael Sveum, a Madison man who was under investigation for stalking. Police got a warrant to put a GPS on his car and secretly attached it while the vehicle was parked in Sveum's driveway. The device recorded his car's movements for five weeks before police retrieved it and downloaded the information.

The information suggested Sveum was stalking the woman, who had gone to police earlier with suspicions. Police got a second warrant to search his car and home, found more evidence and arrested him. He was convicted of stalking and sentenced to prison.

Sveum, 41, argued the tracking violated his Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure. He argued the device followed him into areas out of public view, such as his garage.

The court disagreed. The tracking did not violate constitutional protections because the device only gave police information that could have been obtained through visual surveillance, Lundsten wrote.

Even though the device followed Sveum's car to private places, an officer tracking Sveum could have seen when his car entered or exited a garage, Lundsten reasoned. Attaching the device was not a violation, he wrote, because Sveum's driveway is a public place.

"We discern no privacy interest protected by the Fourth Amendment that is invaded when police attach a device to the outside of a vehicle, as long as the information obtained is the same as could be gained by the use of other techniques that do not require a warrant," he wrote.

Although police obtained a warrant in this case, it wasn't needed, he added.

Larry Dupuis, legal director of the ACLU of Wisconsin, said using GPS to track someone's car goes beyond observing them in public and should require a warrant.

"The idea that you can go and attach anything you want to somebody else's property without any court supervision, that's wrong," he said. "Without a warrant, they can do this on anybody they want."

Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen's office, which argued in favor of the warrantless GPS tracking, praised the ruling but would not elaborate on its use in Wisconsin.

David Banaszynski, president of the Wisconsin Chiefs of Police Association, said his department in the Milwaukee suburb of Shorewood does not use GPS. But other departments might use it to track drug dealers, burglars and stalkers, he said.

A state law already requires the Department of Corrections to track the state's most dangerous sex offenders using GPS. The author of that law, Rep. Scott Suder, R-Abbotsford, said the decision shows "GPS tracking is an effective means of protecting public safety."

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PostPosted: Wed May 13, 2009 7:18 am 
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WTF? Since when is attaching a device to someone's private property without their knowledge, without a warrant (i.e. wiretapping), OK?

I'm not generally a "cops are evil jack booted thugs" kind of guy, but this really gives me a bad case of the bumpy thighs.*




* when the red ass expands...

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PostPosted: Wed May 13, 2009 7:45 am 
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Interesting, New York just said the opposite. Link
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May 12th, 2009
Victory For Location Privacy in New York GPS Tracking Case
Deeplink by Jennifer Granick
Today brings great news for location privacy, especially if you live in New York. The highest court for that state ruled today in People v. Weaver that police may not use a GPS device to track the movements of your vehicle without first getting a warrant. (Opinion here.) In Weaver, state police placed a GPS tracking device on the defendant’s car and tracked it for 65 days for no apparent reason. GPS devices are sophisticated tracking devices that give officers extremely detailed, round-the-clock information about the movements of a vehicle or tagged suspect. As the Court recognized, the GPS unit will disclose trips of an indisputably private nature from which the government can infer not simply where we go, but our political, religious and amorous associations. Since the “potential for a similar capture of information or ‘seeing’ by law enforcement would require, at a minimum, millions of additional police officers and cameras on every street lamp,” GPS poses a categorically different kind of privacy threat than simple tracking beepers previously allowed without a warrant in U.S. Supreme Court cases from the early 1980s. For these reasons, suspicionless, warrantless GPS tracking violates the state guarantees against unreasonable searches and seizures.

The National Association for Criminal Defense Lawyers and EFF signed the friend-of-the-court brief in this case, arguing that individuals’ privacy interests in where they go, what they do, and who they meet deserve protection from unfettered government surveillance.

Acknowledging that federal law is unsettled, the Weaver ruling relies on the New York Constitution’s corollary to the Fourth Amendment, so the warrant requirement now applies to GPS investigations within that state. The opinion, however, will be influential on other states and federal courts as they consider this same issue. The Court persuasively distinguishes the beeper cases on the grounds that GPS is not a mere enhancement of human sensory capacity, but a substitution for law enforcement that facilitates a new and incredibly invasive technological perception of the world.

EFF and the ACLU for the National Capital Area have filed a similar brief in United States v. Jones, a pending federal case in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals where FBI agents planted a GPS device on a car while it was on private property and then used it to track the position of the automobile every ten seconds for a full month, all without securing a warrant. We look forward to that court’s decision in light of the solid reasoning in Weaver.

Related Issues: Cell Tracking, Privacy

Related Cases: US v Jones


Fourtunatly, GPS Blockers are cheap... High Power GPS Blocker with AC Adapter and Car Charger (110V-220V) Price: $32.29


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PostPosted: Wed May 13, 2009 10:10 am 
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On the other hand I do see a silver lining here, in the area of judicial activism.

The judges admit they are more than a little troubled by what their ruling would imply. It would have been a relatively easy step to jump on the judicial activism bandwagon and declare this practice verboten. Instead they applied the current law, as it exists to the situation. Then despite their personal feeling about what was fair, they declared that the law as it exists allows for this. They filled their role as judges. Then they followed up by urging the legislature to fulfill their role as legislators and pass a law to restrict this usage.

Personal feeling did not affect what is a purely a legal issue. That's absolutely the way the system is supposed to work. It may not be the fastest way or the most emotional fulfilling, but it is the right way.

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PostPosted: Wed May 13, 2009 9:30 pm 
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Hmmm....I wonder what would happen if "I" a private citizen decided to put a GPS tracking device on someones vehicle and track their every move with that vehicle for a number of months and then was discovered? I would be willing to bet the word STALKING would come up!! I bet I would be in trouble also.


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PostPosted: Thu May 14, 2009 1:55 am 
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Hell, just put a GPS on your friendly local squad car... Now that it's nice and legal, you know...

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PostPosted: Thu May 14, 2009 3:35 am 
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chunkstyle wrote:
Hell, just put a GPS on your friendly local squad car... Now that it's nice and legal, you know...


I like that idea..just run around and put them on the local squad cars and you'd know right where they are all the time. And you're right, it would be perfectly legal because I could find that information out just by following them around anyway. :wink:


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PostPosted: Thu May 14, 2009 8:53 am 
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Actually, squads now already have GPS, put there at public expense. Since GPS data is now so freely available, via this ruling, you'd think that you could obtain your local PD's GPS codes, by a simple FOIA inquiry. At least in Wisconsin...

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PostPosted: Thu May 14, 2009 10:53 am 
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Last edited by DeanC on Thu May 14, 2009 11:41 am, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: Thu May 14, 2009 11:28 am 
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*spit take*

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PostPosted: Fri May 15, 2009 12:48 am 
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My squad digital video has built in GPS that marks on-screen. The tracking software must be a separate purchase. We don't have it yet.

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PostPosted: Fri May 15, 2009 5:59 am 
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Thought experiment (and, who knows, it could be true): turns out that individuals have an personalized radiation emission profile, kind of like you might find on Star Trek. Unmanned drones flying at 20,000 feet can pick it up, and once you've been "tagged", your movements can be followed anywhere, just like you've got your own personal radio chip embedded.

Should the authorities be allowed to track anybody they feel like, without obtaining a warrant? Or should this be prevented by existing, or subsequently passed, law or the US Constitution?

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PostPosted: Fri May 15, 2009 6:44 am 
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I found that GPSs can be jammed using a simple RCA Television Signal Converter. It seems that when the converter is plugged into a 12v oulet, you can watch the satellites drop, one by one until the signal is useless.

Of course, this is with a "civilian" GPS revciever, more specifically the Garmin Streetpilot, 2005 vintage.

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PostPosted: Fri May 15, 2009 12:46 pm 
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joelr wrote:
Thought experiment (and, who knows, it could be true): turns out that individuals have an personalized radiation emission profile, kind of like you might find on Star Trek. Unmanned drones flying at 20,000 feet can pick it up, and once you've been "tagged", your movements can be followed anywhere, just like you've got your own personal radio chip embedded.

Should the authorities be allowed to track anybody they feel like, without obtaining a warrant? Or should this be prevented by existing, or subsequently passed, law or the US Constitution?


Tom Selleck made that movie in the early 80's...Gene Simmons was the bad guy. Can't remember the name...give me a sec...oh yeah...Runaway http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088024/

Directed by Michaeld Crichton...wow. I didn't remember that.

-edit-

here's a llink to the movie trailer: http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi1803551001/

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