Supreme court seems troubled by police GPS tracking
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Supreme Court justices on Tuesday expressed concerns about the police secretly putting GPS devices on vehicles to track suspects' movements, comparing it to the Big Brother police state of the novel "1984."
If the Obama administration wins its case to allow vehicles to be tracked by global position system, Justice Stephen Breyer said, "Then there is nothing to prevent the police or the government from monitoring 24 hours a day the public movement of every citizen."
A government win would "suddenly produce what sounds like 1984," Breyer said in a reference to the famous George Orwell novel of 1949 that depicted pervasive government surveillance.
In the high court's first consideration of the issue in fighting crime, the justices questioned whether police tracking with GPS devices would invade citizens' basic constitutional privacy rights.
Police use of cell phones, surveillance cameras and even satellites could be affected by the case before the court.
It began in 2005 when police went to a public parking lot in Maryland and secretly installed a GPS device on a Jeep Grand Cherokee used by a Washington, D.C., nightclub owner, Antoine Jones. He was suspected of drug trafficking. Police tracked his movements for a month.
Justice Anthony Kennedy said he had "serious reservations" about the way the device had been installed.
Justice Antonin Scalia also expressed concern, calling it "unquestionably a trespass" by the police and saying the device was attached without Jones' knowledge or approval.
Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben of the U.S. Justice Department defended the use of the GPS device as legal, arguing it simply tracked movement on public streets and was no more intrusive than visual police surveillance.
He acknowledged that a GPS device perhaps can be viewed as a "1984" type invasion of privacy, but said it had not become a "massive universal use of an investigative technique" by the federal government.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that under the government's position anyone could be monitored after leaving their home and entering a vehicle. Only a person's home would be secure from intrusion, she said.
JUSTICE KAGAN: 'TOO MUCH FOR ME'
Justice Elena Kagan said a GPS device can track someone's movements 24 hours a day, wherever they go, and the data reported to the police. "That seems too much to me," she said.
Chief Justice John Roberts said to Dreeben that the normal way to handle questions such as the length of monitoring would be to get a judge's advance approval in a warrant.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked how far the government could go, questioning whether the police could put a computer chip in a person's overcoat or could monitor and track everyone through their cell phones. "That's really the bottom line," she said.
Attorney Stephen Leckar, arguing for Jones, said use of the GPS device was a grave threat and an abuse of privacy rights.
Justice Samuel Alito pressed him on where to draw the line and whether the police could use a GPS device to monitor a suspect just for several hours or for only one day.
Sotomayor asked whether the police can access satellite cameras that show a neighborhood and use that to monitor a person's movement from place to place. Leckar said the police would have to get a warrant.
A ruling is expected before June.
The Supreme Court case is United States v. Antoine Jones, No. 10-1259.
(Reporting by James Vicini; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Cynthia Osterman)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/08/us-usa-police-gps-idUSTRE7A767520111108
How Does A Gps Tracker Work?
If you watch a lot of action-packed movies or TV series these days you must have been awed by how technology can be applied in so many things like crime investigation and tracking. One technology that is often inserted in so many modern movies is the GPS or Global Positioning System. This is one huge project of the US Department of Defense that is fully functional and indeed very useful. The most common application is the GPS tracker that is now installed in most modern cars.
GPS Technology
A GPS unit is mainly made up of three segments: the satellites, the control system, and the user.
There are over two-dozen satellites stationed just outside the earth's atmosphere. These machines are about 11,000 nautical miles above the surface and they are funded and controlled by the US Department of Defense. In order to control these satellites, there are control or monitoring stations in several strategic locations across the globe. These are the units that get the information from the satellites, monitor, and analyze them for any significance in government operations. The user holds the receiver of the radio signals from the orbiting satellites. It can compute its distance from the satellite by using the time stamps on the radio waves that were sent.
To zoom in to a specific location, four satellites are needed. The accuracy is around 10-15 meters so it doesn't really help if the object being tracked is a car that is about 3 meters long. This is why there have been upgrades like the Differential GPS, which helps give more accurate information on the precise location of a vehicle.
Application in cars
The GPS tracker technology has found a lot of use in so many things that need to be tracked. The primary application is in vehicles. With the GPS tracking device installed in the car, the owner is certain that he won't get lost even in places unknown to him. The screen that is hooked on to the GPS system of his car will help him find his way onto the nearest main road leading to his destination - that is, if he got lost.
The best use for the GPS tracking system is in the unfortunate event that the car gets stolen. If you only have the ordinary alarm system installed, you can't be sure about your car's total safety. This is because any skilled car thief can easily override your alarm system and get away with your car - and you will never hear from it again.
The GPS tracker system is a genius of a tracker so your thief can't really go far with your car. The minute you suspect that it's been stolen, you can just report to the authorities immediately and they can tap into the GPS system so they can instantly check where your car is at that very instant.
The GPS tracker is also useful in many other ways like:
o Investigating on a cheating spouse
o Monitoring where your teen kids are
o Keeping track of your pets
o Guarding people on parole
o Tracking small units like cell phones
By: FastSubmitArticles.com
Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com
Sam is the owner of Turborevs Car Security. You can find more information on GPS Car Tracker.
http://www.articledashboard.com/Article/How-does-a-GPS-Tracker-work/551176
