2012: Supreme Court says warrant needed for GPS tracking of suspects

[muriel_volestrangler]

A 9-0 decision in favour of it, and there was much rejoicing on DU: http://www.democraticunderground.com/101432690

We even had:

Justice Samuel Alito also wrote a concurring opinion in which he said the court should have gone further and dealt with GPS tracking of wireless devices, like mobile phones. He was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan.

Of course, since then, this administration is trying to poke holes in that 9-0 decision:

Feds: No Warrant Needed to Track Your Car With a GPS Device

The administration is set to make its argument Tuesday before a federal appeals court in a case testing the parameters of the high court’s 2012 decision. If the government prevails, the high court’s ruling would be virtually meaningless.

“This case is the government’s primary hope that it does not need a judge’s approval to attach a GPS device to a car,” Catherine Crump, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a telephone interview.
...
Among other things, the government is arguing that the Supreme Court has given the police broad exemptions to obtaining search warrants, such as with the oversight of school students and probationers, maintenance at the border, and even searching vehicles and luggage for drugs. That exception should apply to GPS devices, the government said.

In court papers, the authorities also told the 3rd Circuit that demanding warrants could even hinder terrorism cases: (.pdf)

Requiring a warrant and probable cause before officers may attach a GPS device to a vehicle, which is inherently mobile and may no longer be at the location observed when the warrant is obtained, would seriously impede the government’s ability to investigate drug trafficking, terrorism, and other crimes. Law enforcement officers could not use GPS devices to gather information to establish probable cause, which is often the most productive use of such devices. Thus, the balancing of law enforcement interests with the minimally intrusive nature of GPS installation and monitoring makes clear that a showing of reasonable suspicion suffices to permit use of a ‘slap-on’ device like that used in this case.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/03/gps-warrant-requirement/

Somehow, the government thinks that the Supreme Court forgot that a tracking device is mobile. I'd feel insulted, if I were one of them.

But, anyway, we have a unanimous SC ruling that tracking someone, just because they are a suspect, isn't allowed - you need a warrant. It's not about a listening device to hear private conversations; it's data that could be obtained just by having a police car tailing them, in fact. But the SC still thought this was a form of search. This decision was even tied, by Alito no less, to tracking people via mobile phone data. And yet the government is happy that tracking the entire US population by meta-data, without any suspicion of them, is hunky dory.