Supreme Court Rules Against Police in GPS Tracker Case

(Newsroom America) -- The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday unanimously ruled that the use of a Global Position System tracker by police without a valid search warrant is unconstitutional.

The court, in a 9-0 ruling in one of the first major cases regarding privacy in the digital era, said police were wrong to attach a GPS tracker to a suspect's vehicle. But they split 5-4 over the reasoning, which suggested remaining disagreements about how to apply the standard principle of what constituted "unreasonable searches."

The minority pushed for a wide interpretation, which said installing a GPS tracker on a vehicle without the suspect's knowledge and without a warrant not only was trespassing on private property but also violated his "reasonable expectation of privacy."

The majority did not want to go that far, however, saying instead that the act of placing the tracker on the vehicle invaded a person's property the same way a home search would, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia said that, as envisioned at the nation's 18th century founding, the Fourth Amendment's protection of "persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures" would extend today to automobiles.

"The Government physically occupied private property for the purpose of obtaining information. We have no doubt that such a physical intrusion would have been considered a 'search' within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment when it was adopted," Scalia wrote.

He was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor.

Privacy advocates said despite the split over reasoning, the court's unanimous decision sent a strong message.

Further, limiting Fourth Amendment protections to trespassing property as understood in 1791 "is unwise" and "highly artificial," Justice Alito wrote in a concurring opinion, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan.

The case stemmed from a narcotics operation that turned up nearly 100 kilograms of cocaine and about $1 million when police raided a house in suburban Fort Washington, Md., in 2005.

Police and FBI agents tracked Antoine Jones, a nightclub owner, for months using techniques that were approved via federal warrants.

But an appeals court eventually threw out Jones' conviction because police used a GPS tracker without a warrant to monitor Jones' movements for about four weeks.

© 2012 Newsroom America.

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