The Supreme Court has concluded that tracking a vehicle by attaching a GPS device to it is a search.
I know we've been seeing more and more of these cases in the district, especially in the Northern Division.
Authorities actually got a warrant to track the vehicle, but they installed the device after expiration of the warrant and outside of the authorized jurisdiction. Over the course of four weeks, the tracker relayed more than 2,000 pages of data.
Ultimately, gov charged defendant with cocaine offenses. Defense filed motion to suppress based on use of the GPS. Dist ct suppressed data obtained while the car was parked in the defendant's garage. Ct admitted rest of data b/c from public thoroughfares. A jury convicted the defendant and he received a sentence of life imprisonment.
The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed, finding that warrantless use of the GPS violated the Fourth Amendment.
Supreme Court held "that the Government's installation of a GPS devise on a target's vehicle, and its use of that devise to monitor the vehicle's movements, constitutes a 'search.'" The government here "physically occupied private property for the purpose of obtaining information."
The Court goes back to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century cases to discuss the original understanding of the Fourth Amendment. Fourth Amendment jurisprudence was tied to common-law trespass, at least until the later part of the last century. More recent cases have deviated from the exclusively property-based approach. Court cited Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967).
The Court concluded that "Fourth Amendment rights do not rise or fall with the Katz formulation" (the reasonable-expectation-of-privacy formulation). Rather, the Court must assure preservation of the degree of privacy that existed when the Fourth Amendment was adopted. For most of the country's history, the Fourth Amendment was understood to be concerned with government trespass upon the enumerated areas: persons, houses, papers, effects.
The Court discussed the "beeper cases," the cases that had posed problems in the GPS context b/c they had rejected Fourth Amendment challenges to using a beeper to track items: Knotts and Karo. The Court distinguished Knotts and Karo b/c the beeper was placed in the container with the consent of the owner at the time and prior to the container coming into the defendant's possession. Here, the defendant possessed the vehicle at the time the authorities installed the GPS.
Justice Sotomayor concurred:
* Found a search occurred.
* The reasonable-expectation-of-privacy test "augmented, but did not displace or diminish, the common-law trespassory test."
* Found that "the trespassory test applied in the majority's opinion reflects an irreducible constitutional minimum: When the Government physically invades personal property to gather information, a search occurs. The reaffirmation of that principle suffices to decide this case."
* Considered the issue of tracking that does not require trespass (e.g., factory-installed GPS devices tracked by the government).
* Cited Chief Judge Kozinski's (Ninth Cir.) opinion in Pineda-Moreno and acknowledged that "Awareness that the Government may be watching chills associational and expressive freedoms." The justice would take these factors into account when considering the existence of a reasonable societal expectation of privacy in one's movements.
Justice Alito also filed a separate concurrence:
* Believes the majority opinion "strains the language of the Fourth Amendment," is not supported by case law, and "is highly artificial."
* Would use the reasonable-expectation-of-privacy test.
* Finds that the majority disregards the potential impact of the GPS and potential use of the information, and attaches too much importance to the placement of the unit on the car. Explores some of the issues with property rights.
* Concedes there are problems with the reasonable-expectation-of-privacy test.
* Finds that short-term monitoring on public streets might be OK, but long-term monitoring would not be.
* Legislation, rather than case law, may be the best means for addressing the issues.
