Cops put GPS tracker on man’s car, charge him with theft for removing it | Hacker News Reader

Cops put GPS tracker on man’s car, charge him with theft for removing it

arstechnica.com

72 pointslnguyen10 comments

> A lawyer for the government acknowledged that it wouldn't be theft to remove a tracking device put there by a private party. But he argued that things are different when the government has a warrant to use a tracking device. The device had a legal basis for being on the car, the lawyer argued. By removing it and preventing tracking, Heuring was depriving the government of the use of its property.

In order for that argument to make any rational sense at all (and we're talking about the law here, so "rational sense" doesn't necessarily enter into it), the police should have to label the device with a property tag identifying it as belonging to the police.

If it's impossible to tell if a device is from a jilted lover or from the cops, then saying the removing it in one case is OK but in the other is not is effectively saying that it's never OK to remove it.

This document contains the appellate judges "reasoning"

https://www.in.gov/judiciary/opinions/pdf/07181901mgr.pdf

Is there a database of judges who pull this crap? Like a rate my professor kind of thing?

So by this logic, the cops could get a warrant to bug your house, put a big, obvious microphone in the middle of your living room, label it "FBI surveillance microphone", and you would be forbidden from removing it? What about an ankle monitor? Can those be attached with a mere warrant, not part of any punishment? Just how obedient are US citizens required to be at the request of a mere (mostly rubber-stamped) warrant?

So if I'm a cop and I want to manufacture probable cause to raid your house, all I have to do is attach a tracking device somewhere stupidly obvious on your car and wait for it to stop working?

Or claim that a confidential informant said drugs were being sold at the house, or say they thought they were raiding a different house they had a warrant to raid but got the address wrong, or claim that they smelled weed, or claim they heard a ruckus and needed to investigate possible disorderly conduct, or any number of other things.

Why not just skip all that?

You could literally walk up to ~near the suspect's car with the GPS tracker, have it give a few results (recorded), then walk off with the GPS yourself.

Who'd believe the perp's claims of innocence, that they'd never seen the tracker (etc)...

I'd love to see how they'd react if the guy welded a steel box around the GPS unit while it was still on his car.

They’d get him on the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act. Because the unit is a government computer, and he is tampering with its operation.

But seriously, how the fuck is this not subject to both 4th & 5th Amendment challenge? Can someone point me to whatever brain-dead Supreme Court judgment that somehow allows this nonsense?

Probably would be smart, now, to send unidentified tracking devices to a friend in Madagascar, via boat, and then return it to the local police via whatever boat Greta Thunberg is riding... you know, to reduce CO2 impacts. That way, there is no 'mens rea', or mental intent, to deprive the officers of their property. On the stand, the alleged thief could truthfully say, "I sent it to the local police station, address XXX YYY St, etc. etc.".

So, should he have shipped it or dropped it off at the police station?

I wonder though, could they have charged him with destruction of evidence?

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