Most of us really appreciate the benefits of GPS — except when it's
surreptitiously attached to our
vehicle by the government. And how would you know?
You wouldn't. That's the point, of course: Feds and police agencies
investigating bad guys don't
want them to know they're being tracked. But what if you're not a bad
guy? What if you're just ...
you?
Several justices on the U.S. Supreme Court said Tuesday they have
reservations about allowing
law enforcement to do such monitoring without a warrant. If the
federal government wins the case
before the Supremes, it would "suddenly produce what sounds like
'1984,' " said Justice Stephen
Breyer.
Another Supreme Court justice, Elena Kagan, said with GPS being able
to track a person's
movements 24 hours a day, "that seems too much to me."
The court heard arguments in the case, which is an appeal by the
federal government of a lower-
court decision that tossed out a drug conspiracy conviction of a
Maryland man. In that case, the
FBI and local police didn't have a valid search warrant when they put
a GPS device on the man's
car, the lower court ruled.
Justice Department attorney Michael Dreeben told the high court
Tuesday that GPS devices are
very helpful especially in the initial stages of an investigation,
when GPS can do the monitoring
work that might be otherwise be required of a team of officers. And,
he argued, GPS is only one of
many police tools that don't require a warrant; others include going
through a person's trash or
following a suspect 24/7.
Cases of surprised citizens finding government GPS units on their car
aren't everyday occurrences,
but they are happening.
In March, an Egyptian-American college student filed suit against the
FBI for secretly putting a GPS
tracking device on his car. Yasir Afifi, a California native who said
he had and has nothing to hide,
said a mechanic doing an oil change on his car found the device
between his car's right rear wheel
and exhaust.
At a news conference, Afifi said when he asked the FBI about the
device, the agency did not give
him a clear answer as to why he was being monitored
"I'm sure I have done nothing wrong to provoke anyone's interest,"
Afifi said in an Associated Press report, "although he noted that his
family is from Egypt, he's a young man and he makes a lot of calls
overseas. 'So I'm sure I fit their profile.' "
Perhaps Greg also fits that profile. Wired's Threat Level reports
Tuesday that Greg, a "Hispanic American who lives in San Jose at the
home of his girlfriend's parents," contacted the publication
after finding not one, but two hidden GPS devices on his Volvo SUV:
After contacting Wired and allowing a photographer to snap pictures of
(the first) device, it was
swapped out and replaced with a second tracking device. A witness also
reported seeing a strange
man looking beneath the vehicle of the young man's girlfriend while
her car was parked at work,
suggesting that a tracking device may have been retrieved from her car.
Then things got really weird when police showed up during a Wired
interview with the man.
The monitoring, Greg told Wired, "most likely involves a criminal drug
investigation
centered around his cousin, a Mexican citizen who fled across the
border to that country
a year ago and may have been involved in the drug trade as a dealer."
And when the Wired reporter "drove down to meet Greg and photograph the second
tracker with photographer Snyder, three police cars appeared at the
location that had
been pre-arranged with Greg, at various points driving directly behind
me without
making any verbal contact before leaving."
College student Afifi, who spoke to msnbc.com's Kari Huus recently,
said when he found the GPS device on his car, he photographed it and
posted the pictures on the Internet. A
few days later, he said, FBI agents showed up at his house, demanding
he return the
tracker. He did so but declined to answer questions or allow them in
the house without
a warrant, he told Huus.
The Supreme Court is expected to rule before June on the issue of
whether a warrant is needed for
GPS monitoring. Until then, wouldn't hurt to check your car or ask
your mechanic to do so. Just in
case.