Two New Fed GPS Trackers Found on SUV

Still, it's sad to think the most effective / damaging / and possibly profitable approach for a risk averse terrorist might be to pretend to be a overly helpful.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism#House_Committee_on_...

No, we avoid this problem by killing natural born US citizens outside the country before they can be put on trial. Far easier politically that way.

Why does it even matter WHERE a teenager is from if they are innocent? Why would you imprison and fly them out of their own country before you know if they are actually guilty of anything? Then treat them so badly over years that you can never release them again because they will become a terrorist against you for the way you treated them?

  > That this was done with a GPS device as opposed to
  > being tailed by people doesn't strike me as a big
  > difference

What's the difference between having a cop watch a street corner vs installing a security camera? You can install a lot of security cameras for the same cost as hiring a police officer or FBI agent.

It's the same case here. They can track a lot more people via GPS devices when they don't have to pay for agents (agent salaries + car + gas) to tail someone.

I mean, at ~$400 a pop, how many GPS devices can you get for the cost of a single agent? And a list of GPS coordinates is something that can easily be processed automatically to look for patterns.

The rest of your comment saps your credibility.

"Some pissed off cop can just" &c &c &c --- well, let's not discuss what the police should be able to do at all then, because this is logic that inevitably ends up with us throwing up our hands. Or, because we're on Hyperbolic News, having a debate about whether the citizens of a truly free society need police at all.

Only if it were real-time. If there were a 7 day lag on the data being publicized it would prove the point without giving the possibility of using the data to evade police in the moment.

Also, with that level of snark, I have to ask, what do you propose as an alternative?

No, it's against "the law." It's hardly a crime.

But semantic distinctions aside, I really don't care if it's a crime or not. If the US governments fucks with me and pisses me off, I'm going to do what I'm going to do.

It’s far better to work to make such activities illegal than to do your complaining from behind bars.

That's not really an either/or thing. They haven't (yet, as far as I know) put one of these on my car, and I work on making things like this illegal though the political process . And I'll continue to do so, up until the (hypothetical) day that I wind up behind bars for fucking with one of their silly little tracking devices.

All that said, I can't imagine them ever getting a conviction in a jury trial, on a charge of "tampering with a government owned device" if it's not labeled or anything. It's totally reasonable to say "Oh, I found this thing on my car and I didn't know what it was so I took it off and threw it away" or "I knew what it was, but I assumed my crazy stalker ex-girlfriend put it there," etc. Getting any reasonable jury to convict on this would be insanely difficult.

This is not entirely true, for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_detector_detector

It appears that many, if not all GPS devices use superheterodyne receiver as well.

Or can you actually point to an elected official that says, let's END social security, medicare, and farm subsidies, cut the DoD budget by 80% and gut the rest of the federal budget?

But I'm not prepared to lump everything that law enforcement does in with the TSA. One of the biggest problems with the TSA is that they're not a real law enforcement agency; they're lowest-bidder contractors and subcontractors that exist almost entirely for the purpose of making people feel safer, because anything as annoying as the TSA must be making us safer.

Let's be as specific as we can.

Why would it be any different than your car? It's not actually on your person, per se, it's on your clothing, which is different. Sure, the resolution of the determined movement is higher, but they could have an agent tail you to the same effect if you left your car.

The line we draw in the sand is somewhat arbitrary, but it has to be there. I'm generally for putting the line further up the slippery slope.

Previously, their ability to monitor people was limited by physical resources. This technology largely eliminates that constraint and allows them to conduct surveillance in cases where they never would have felt it was worth their time before. For roughly the same amount of work that tailing a suspect traditionally would have required, they can now track everybody he's come in contact with.

So the question is, did we really mean for police to have unlimited surveillance powers, or was it simply never considered before because natural limits always existed? I would argue the latter.

This is similar to how the Second Amendment cannot reasonably be read as allowing individuals to own thermonuclear warheads. That is obviously outside its intended scope, even though a literal reading of "right to bear arms" would appear to allow it.

While I freely concede I'm making a "balance" argument and as such there can be reasonable disagreement on where the correct balance is, there is a bound on how far you want to take that. It is not a bad thing that law enforcement takes some effort, as it serves as a sort of natural counter on excessively zealous enforcement, one far more effective than any law or ACLU lawsuit could ever be. The goal isn't to make the police job as easy as possible, the goal is to serve justice.

This makes it easy to keep an eye on a much larger number of people with little increase in manpower, and the problem there is that by increasing the amount of data, while at the same time reducing the quality of the priors on the data that the person (or perhaps rather the vehicle) in question has committed some sort of crime, you will start encountering the classic signal processing problem where you will inevitably start to get more false positives. Requiring a warrant to drop these on somebody's car, and therefore requiring some sort of prior probable cause, isn't just good civil liberties (because those false positives hurt real people), it's good statistics.

Doing "the same thing as before, only more easily" is still an important qualitative change in law enforcement and security in general, and I think you need an argument more powerful than that to justify the change in question.

Should any police officer be allowed to view the location records for any vehicle without a warrant? How about view all the records for all vehicles?

I don't understand where you draw the line. You don't think it's necessary for them to get a warrant, but you don't think they should be able to at-will tap into any OnStar system. Those, in my eyes, are virtually the same thing. The standard of "probable cause" has been around for a long time and it is in place because of the language of the Fourth Amendment which protects against "unreasonable" searches and seizures.

Watching suspects the hard way, with patrol cars and binoculars, is really expensive for the police department. They're forced by their own internal economies to gather data only on people they're deeply interested in. That, I'd argue, is why it's ok to follow people without a warrant. GPS transponders are much cheaper, so the police have less motivation to focus on only the most important suspects.

the added costs of having a person track a target means more care is taken to avoid false positives. the person doing the tracking can also dis-regard irrelevant data that an automated system might erroneously use.

imagine some program that automatically sifted through a source of ubiquitous GPS data which actually did catch 100% of all terrorist attempts in New York in 2010 (the Times Square bombing attempt). what if that system meant 100 false positives were added to the no-fly-list because they drove on street X on date Y followed by street Z within 2 days (or some other such algorithm) when (if) someone asks about these no-fly-list additions they are simply told that the suspects exhibited behavior that was consistent with the Times Square bomber... if you are not a terrorist, you have nothing to hide!

a. If putting a GPS tracker on my car* involves venturing onto my driveway during the night, then you're intruding on the curtilage of my dwelling. The fact that the mail carrier or meter reader is allowed to do so does not mean that I grant the police a free invite onto the easily accessible parts of my property. This is the basic issue that the Supreme Court will take up today.

* not that I actually have a car - a cunning anti-surveillance measure, if I say so myself

b. Even if I park my car on the street, shouldn't the police have to deal with economic scarcity like everyone else, and prioritize whether or not I am worthy of investigation? If technology as a matter of convenience is acceptable grounds for carrying out surveillance, why not require all cars to be fitted with GPS trackers that record their position and can be read out wirelessly by any passing cop who thinks he recognizes your car from a recent tip? If we don't want to force people to buy GPS devices, then why not make such GPS data automatically searchable? Google Latitude records all my movements, should the police have access to that without a warrant for reasons of convenience?

c. In any of these cases, should we mandate that the information be public? After all, if a crime is sufficiently interesting, the media will sue for access to all evidence or to broadcast the court proceedings on first amendment grounds (spurious ones if you ask me; I've soured on TV trials). Since the evidence will become public anyway, what interest does the individual have in keeping it private once the state has decided to inspect it? No jurisprudence says that you have any property interest in your privacy, and it's not hard to construct an argument for any given search being reasonable. I've seen the presence of raindrops on a moving vehicle at 3am offered and accepted as reasonable grounds for a search (which correct intuition helped to catch a murderer fleeing the scene of a crime, as it turned out).

d. If almost any search is reasonable and can become a matter of public record by default, is there not an argument that possession of a GPS device in a car or phone that is deliberately turned off, disabled, or left behind by the user constitutes circumstantial evidence of intent in criminal or even tort cases? As you know, the threshold for establishing intent or knowledge in criminal cases can be quite low if it's not the sole fact in question, and it's lower again in civil litigation. If I can demonstrate a pattern of GPS use on your part that is temporarily interrupted during a period overlapping the commission of a crime that was reasonably accessible from your last recorded location, isn't there a basis for suspecting that you wished to conceal your movements?

e. Even if a warrant is required for me to get hold of your phone records or gain access to the contents of your phone, doesn't the fact that I could snoop your phone use over your shoulder whenever you pull it out in public compromise any expectation of privacy that you have when operating your phone in public? In other words, if I approach you while using your phone and suddenly order you to hand it over for inspection on the grounds that I saw something which appeared suspicious to me on the screen, are you entitled to lock your phone by hitting the power button? After all, your phone was open to the world (in plain view), and that's why I noticed something suspicious about it. Your locking of the device would then seem to constitute interference with a lawful search...

Sure, I'm playing slippery-slope here, but these are all cognizable arguments and I have heard as much and more from various conservatives and police officers over the years. I'm rather conservative myself where jurisprudence is concerned, but GPS tracking strikes me as an active rather than a passive sort of surveillance, not least because it necessarily involves interference with property or person to plant the tracking device.

What if this technology was cheap enough to slap one on everybody's car? If you don't need a warrant, why not? Can the feds install a tracker on every car in the USA? It's a lot cheaper than following everyone.

There is a mechanism for targeting specific individuals in the course of an actual investigation. It is getting a warrant.

I mostly agree, but I think it makes more sense to flip the question: what do we lose by requiring a warrant to attach the device? If it's a valid criminal investigation, it seems like this would be easy to obtain, and having this small hurdle seems like it would help prevent abuse for political or personal agenda.

For me, the difference between attaching a temporary removable device and traditional visual surveillance is that individuals are allowed to monitor the coming and goings of vehicles in public, but are not allowed to trespass to do so. While I might be OK with an agency deciding that a vehicle should be monitored after following a written procedure, I'm not OK with individual officers making this decision without central approval. Or do you think it should be legal for individuals to do attach their own devices?

This seems especially true if the attachment requires concealment via modification to the property, camouflage, tools, or splicing into the existing electrical system. But anything which follows the person onto their own private property and perhaps even into their home garage – as an attached bug necessarily does – has crossed what I see as a bright line between 'surveillance in public' and 'surveillance in private'.

To that I reply "A policeman's job is only easy in a police state" from Orson Well's "A Touch of Evil"

If requiring warrants lets some criminals slip away, that's too bad. You can only approach 100% police success in a police state.

Without a warrant, you open the door to them being used for harassment. For example, by people who have videotaped police brutality and the like can be followed around in ways that would be impractical otherwise. With a warrant, they at least have to justify their use and it would create a paper trail that would document any abuse of power.

I think it's an interesting technology (though the devices are way too conspicuous if anyone goes looking...) and I see no reason to ban them. But I think there's a long enough history of bad apples in the police department abusing things such that we should be very careful about giving out grants of unchecked power. Today it's a GPS. Tomorrow, they might plant cameras or other devices, saying they didn't need a warrant for the GPS, so they shouldn't need one for any other device.

Sure, they've always been able to just tail you with no warrant, but that required more of an investment of their time, which limits how badly (and covertly) it could be abused. With technology removing these limits, the potential for abuses widens, and so it's reasonable to ask them to justify its use.

If a warrant is too burdensome for whatever reason, I could at least be satisfied if someone was required to articulate the reason for its use and submit that paperwork to the courts, without requiring their approval, prior to attaching the device, so that they would have someone watching over their shoulder for abuse without impeding all the legitimate uses of this technology. But I see no reason to grant them unchecked power.

Please don't misinterpret this as implying that all cops can't be trusted or something like that, though. I've known good cops. I lived in a small town and pretty much the whole force looked after us after something terrible happened. But I also know what happens when things go wrong; I've seen the recordings of corrupt cops and the brutality videos. I just think there's a happy medium where we check for abuse without tying the hands of the honest cops who are trying to protect us.

The warrant process also happens to be agnostic to advances in data harvesting technology (i.e., even if omni-tracking like you speak of below becomes the norm, the use of the data in an investigation or prosecution could still be mediated with warrants).

Instead, what precisely do you find so onerous about requiring a warrant for GPS surveillance? And would you support private citizens using these devices to the same extent?

Anyway, I don't think anyone's reasonably arguing for banning this technology. Requiring a warrant is still going to allow law enforcement to to do a better job with fewer resources; I truly don't see why it would be such a big hassle.

This is particularly true of smaller police or quasi-police organizations whose professional standards aren't quite up to snuff. For example, the NYS Department of Labor placed a GPS tracking unit on the personal vehicle of an employee suspected of misconduct. They are now facing a big lawsuit.

In the good old days, the police could tail a suspect 24x7, but they would need the clearance to commit staff and overtime to the effort. If a detective goes to his Captain looking to follow around some random kid for weeks, he needs justification.

Today, you need to buy a cheap device and spend a few minutes planting and retrieving it. That minimal expense allows you to track a subject with complete impunity for weeks.

The inevitable result of all of this is going to be widespread abuse. A free society cannot remain so if citizens cannot conduct their affairs without looking over their shoulder (or under their car) at every moment. We need judicial oversight to answer the age-old question: "Who watches the watchmen?"

They don't follow you onto private property, this device can do that.

Also the only reason they put these on cars instead of on a person, say in a briefcase or a watch is b/c miniaturized active tracking tech isn't cheap/available enough--soon enough it will be.

Okay, so why not require a warrant for clear-cut cases like you suggest here? There's a legal mechanism, a historical precedent, a best-practice way of handling this sort of privacy intrusion. What is the compelling reason for throwing all that away?

I'm not generally opposed to things that allow law enforcement to do a better job with fewer resources.

Do you honestly imagine that a police department that adopts warrant-less GPS trackers will lay off some of the force it no longer needs for stakeouts and surveillance?

I don't.

This is a more efficient way of doing surveillance, but it isn't something that will be used to "do a better job with fewer resources." It will be used - it is being used - to cast a wider net, to launch larger fishing expeditions, just like every single piece of surveillance technology and surveillance-related legislation in living memory.

The security services bugged the HQ of the Communist Party of Great Britain (because the UK doesn't have a bill of rights it's legal to be a commie there). The members found the bug and destroyed it. They were then prosecuted (succesfully) for destroying government property - even though the government denied planting the bug, and in those days even denied the existence of the security services.

Their case was that the defendants believed it was government property and therefore their intent was to destroy government property.

So if you have a reason to be tracked by the police then it would be a crime to destroy it. But if you have no reason to believe you have done anything wrong then it's more reasonable to believe it's a terrorist bomb and you should call the FBI/DHS/Army etc

Back when I worked for a defense company our cars were checked with mirrors on sticks everytime we went to work, we had special police numbers to call if we ever saw any suspicious activity around our cars or received a suspicious package at home.

Although they weren't very understanding when I was away on a trip and my wife opened a package containing a microcontroller I ordered - and started an alert!