Supreme Court: Warrant Needed For GPS Tracking
January 24, 2012 | National News
The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that police must have a search warrant to place a GPS tracker on a suspect's vehicle. It's a key ruling carving out personal privacy space in the high-tech era. While the ruling was unanimous, the justices split three ways as to whether the decision went far enough.
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DAVID GREENE, HOST:
The U.S. Supreme Court is stepping - albeit gingerly - into the question of privacy in the information age. The court has ruled that police have to obtain a court-authorized warrant before they place a GPS device on a suspect's car. While the outcome was unanimous, the justices split three ways as to whether that decision went far enough. We'll have two reports, beginning with NPR's legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg.
NINA TOTENBERG, BYLINE: The court's unanimous ruling reversed the conviction of a Washington, D.C. nightclub owner sentenced to life in prison for drug trafficking. The justices agreed that his conviction could not stand because the FBI had placed a GPS tracking device on his jeep, and without a warrant, had tracked his every move for 28 days, using the resulting evidence to convict him.
But there the agreement stopped, with the justices divided on the legal rationale, and liberals and conservatives split in unusual ways. The lead opinion, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, said that because the tracking device was physically placed on the car, at a minimum, it was a search within the original meaning of the Constitution's ban on searches of property without a warrant.
Left unresolved were major issues involving cell phones, e-mails, tracking by remote device, even long-term tracking by aerial surveillance. Does the government need a warrant to get access to that sort of information, where there's been no physical intrusion on property? George Washington University professor Orrin Kerr says such questions remain unresolved.
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