The Jersey Lawyer

Today the United States Supreme Court heard arguments in the case of United States v. Jones, in which the Supreme Court will decide the question of whether police need a warrant before secretly attaching a GPS tracking device to a suspect’s car.  Antoine Jones, a nightclub owner in Washington, D.C. was arrested after police put a GPS device on his jeep and followed his movements for more than four weeks.  Using the evidence that was obtained from the GPS device, Jones was convicted of drug trafficking and was sentenced to life in prison.  However, the Court of Appeals threw out the conviction on the grounds that the installation of the GPS device violated Jones’ right to be free from unlawful searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment.  Now, the issue will be decided by the Supreme Court of the United States.

During arguments before the Supreme Court, the attorney for the government argued that there is little difference between monitoring a car on public streets using a GPS device and police surreptitiously tailing a suspect.  He also pointed out that the court ruled in 1983, in United States v. Knotts, that police can use a beeper device to track a suspect’s car on public streets.  However, Justice Roberts noted during the argument that the technology is very different and you get a lot more information from the GPS surveillance than you do from following a beeper.

Justice Ginsberg noted that if the Court were to accept the government’s position, it would mean that any of us could be monitored whenever we leave our homes.  Other justices were concerned that if the court allows police to install GPS devices without a warrant, the practice could become widespread.  In fact, it would not be an extraordinary cost for the government to put tracking devices on every vehicle in the country.

The Fourth Amendment prohibits authorities from conducting “unreasonable searches and seizures,” such as entering someone’s home, unless they can obtain a warrant by persuading a magistrate of “probable cause” to suspect a crime.  However, the breadth of the amendment has often been tested as new technologies emerge that make it easier for police to track movements.

In voiding Mr. Jones’s conviction, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said that the odds of someone following a single car’s movements 24 hours a day for a month “effectively were nil.” The appellate court further noted that a person who knows all of another’s travels can learn a lot of information about that person that they would not normally know, such as whether the person attends church, whether he frequents bars and nightclubs, whether he is a regular at the gym, an unfaithful husband, an outpatient receiving medical treatment, an associate of particular individuals or political groups—and not just one such fact about a person, but all such facts.