C_Clayton_Jones
Diamond Member
Police and high-tech monitoring
The next chapter in police use of new technology has begun to unfold in the Court, against the background of a direct conflict among lower courts. At issue is the tracking of suspects by secretly installing a GPS device on their cars.
What the Court is now being asked to decide is, first, whether a GPS track is a search, under the Constitutions Fourth Amendment, and when might the continuous monitoring of a track become an invalid search if police do it without having a search warrant. The Supreme Court left that second question open when, in U.S. v. Knotts in 1983, it ruled that police use of an electronic beeper to track a suspects trip to a drug lab was not a search. What seems to be newly at issue is the role that the duration of tracking plays in the constitutional equation; the argument is that, the longer the tracking, the more movements are monitored, the greater the potential for invading privacy.
Police and high-tech monitoring : SCOTUSblog
The next chapter in police use of new technology has begun to unfold in the Court, against the background of a direct conflict among lower courts. At issue is the tracking of suspects by secretly installing a GPS device on their cars.
What the Court is now being asked to decide is, first, whether a GPS track is a search, under the Constitutions Fourth Amendment, and when might the continuous monitoring of a track become an invalid search if police do it without having a search warrant. The Supreme Court left that second question open when, in U.S. v. Knotts in 1983, it ruled that police use of an electronic beeper to track a suspects trip to a drug lab was not a search. What seems to be newly at issue is the role that the duration of tracking plays in the constitutional equation; the argument is that, the longer the tracking, the more movements are monitored, the greater the potential for invading privacy.
Police and high-tech monitoring : SCOTUSblog