Answer: According to the reasoning of the 9th Circuit case
Pineda-Moreno, the 9th Circuit apparently thinks the police, with or without reasonable suspicion, can follow your vehicle 24/7 because you have no reasonable expectation of privacy wherever your car goes, outside a very private closed garage, etc. The 9th Circuit clearly implied exactly this, reasoning by analogy that since it was ever so clear to them under a prior case called Knotts that cops can follow someone anywhere on public roads and parking lots without any privacy invasion, then clearly, the court thought, a GPS device can be secretly installed in the driveway of someone's home (which driveway is unfenced) without even a modest requirement of reasonable suspicion -- since there's no reasonable expectation of privacy in any publicly visible area. In a footnote the court said it could revisit if there were any massive violations in this area. {!}
So, unless you live in a gated community of private roads, or have a Palin-style 14 foot fence, or in other words if you're rich enough, then you may have a tiny residue of home privacy left, but even in that case never outside the walls of your home or even inside your home if any of it can be seen in "open view" through windows, if your gated community and fencing isn't robust enough.
Isn't this a key part of the very picture of a totalitarian state: Police tailing someone 24/7 in a police vehicle, specifically without probable cause?
TRANSLATION: IT is clearly implied that police cars can follow someone 24/7 without reasonable suspicion, that 'fact' is used to justify the specific holding of the case, allowing GPS devices to be secretly installed in a private unfenced driveway or street parking area because there were, at best, semi-private in the case of the driveway and public in the case of the street.
The only way the court could ever hold otherwise and distance itself from this implication would be to criticize its own lax reasoning in the Pineda-Moreno case as "dicta" and then somehow it would have to distinguish police tailing around the clock for no reason and with no suspicion WITH a VISIBLE police car, from the case of police tailing 24/7 with an INVISIBLE "police car" so to speak, in the form of a technological GPS-device that the court says gives the same information (location) as the tailing in a real police car.
Here's how the opinion actually "reasons," saying:
"{...}whereas
in Knotts, as in this case, “{t}he substitute is for an activity, namely following a car on a public street, that is unequivocally not a search within the meaning of the amendment.” United States v. Garcia, 474 F.3d 994, 997 (7th Cir.2007). Pineda-Moreno makes no claim that the agents used the tracking devices to intrude into a constitutionally protected area.
The only information the agents obtained from the tracking devices was a log of the locations where Pineda-Moreno's car traveled, information the agents could have obtained by following the car. UNITED STATES v. PINEDA-MORENO, No. 08-30385, January 11, 2010
http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-9th-circuit/1497005.html All the Founders and great political philosophers (of freedom and democracy) that I know of agree that the proper attitude is to be "jealous" of any apparent invasion of rights, to be vigilant in defense of liberty. This means being akin to a sentinel, responding to noises with an attitude of defending rights even in cases where it may well in the end turn out to "be nothing." In light of that, I can't see any reason for rolling over and going back to sleep on this opinion, falsely smug with the idea that the case concerned large purchases of fertilizer for marijuana activity, because a holding is a general rule applied to all, and the court said it didn't need to rule whether or not reasoanble suspicion much less probable cause existed because there was no 4th Amendment search.
Only 3 states with more protective state constitutions appear exempt as the court notes in footnote: Washington, Oregon, and New York.
ON EDIT: Connecting my recent post on Google's Droid phone, which was based entirely on direct quotes from Google's CEO: If you like the holding of this case, may I recommend the purchase of a cell phone with the google "Droid" operating system on it, because, as Google's CEO was recently bragging in the Wall Street Journal, they know where you are at all times within 1 foot. (In addition to knowing who you are, what you're interested in, and roughly who your friends are, and having google earth pics of your home, etc.,
ad nauseum) Combine that with this case, and they can track you without warrant or even suspicion 24/7 using your Droid phone alone.
A Droid phone, then, in our Brave New World of "constitutional" law, is not a Smartphone, it's more like a SmartBomb.
Think about the chill on braver political activity like Martin Luther King's (who was followed, harassed, etc by FBI): How easy would it be to call in a drone or have a scaffold accidentally collapse against a political leader of resistance carrying a cell phone? Or even just to scare them?
Droid phones are the stylish new symbol of total privacy abdication. (Of course you and I know that governments including the US government have never tracked, harassed, intimidated or killed any political "resistance" at any time... :sarcasm: )
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