Court says no GPS tracking without warrant.

When you are driving down a public highway, the police may not track your progress with an electronic device without a warrant, a U.S. Appeals Court ruled on August 6. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said the use of Global Positioning System evidence to convict two defendants of drug dealing violated the Fourth Amendment right of persons to be secure in their "persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures."

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The issue involved the use of GPS units on a car, long a contentious issue, with defenders of the practice arguing that similar observations can be made without the electronic surveillance, simply by driving around and noting that the owner's car is at home, at the grocery store, or wherever. But opponents, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), argue that the electronic surveillance allows the police to keep tabs on a person's coming and going at every stop on a minute-by-minute or hourly basis for days or even months on end without having to convince a judge of probable cause for suspecting criminal activity by the target or targets of the surveillance.

The appeals court found that Antoine Jones and Lawrence Maynard, co-owners of a nightclub, had been convicted on narcotics charges based on evidence the police obtained by attaching a GPS unit to a car parked on private property. The police tracked the car's whereabouts for a month to gain evidence of the men's alleged narcotics activity. The government argued that the men had no reasonable expectation of privacy since the car's movements took place on public roads.

"Society recognizes Jones' expectation of privacy in his movements over the course of a month as reasonable, and the use of the GPS device to monitor those movements defeated that reasonable expectation," the appeals court ruled.

Both the ACLU and EFF applauded the decision because the Supreme Court has not yet considered location (racking when it's used in such depth and for such a long period of time.

"GPS tracking enables the police to know when you visit your doctor, your lawyer, your church, or your lover," ACLU-NCA (ACLU of the National Capital Area) legal director Arthur Spitzer said in a statement. "And if many people are tracked, GPS data will show when and where they cross paths. Judicial supervision of this powerful technology is essential if we are to preserve individual liberty. Today's decision helps brings the Fourth Amendment into the 21st Century."