RE: US Supreme Court rules that GPS Monitoring without a warrant is unconstitutional!
January 24, 2012 at 9:57 pm
Not so fast. Read the justification of the decision. The supreme court did not recognize at all the defendent's right to privacy, nor the right against warrantless surveillance in the electronic age, which might be seen as the crux of the matter and the larger issue at stake.
Instead, the court created so narrow a justification for the superficially sound decision as to effectively changed nothing at all.
The court effectively said the only thing the police did wrong was to temper with the property of the defendant, his car, in mounting the warrantless GPS device, which amounted to trespassing, and that must be a no no in the age of widening gap between the rich and the poor.
It said nothing at all about whether the police could put you under surveillance at will, so long as they don't have to break into your home or car to install the surveillance device.
Instead, the court created so narrow a justification for the superficially sound decision as to effectively changed nothing at all.
The court effectively said the only thing the police did wrong was to temper with the property of the defendant, his car, in mounting the warrantless GPS device, which amounted to trespassing, and that must be a no no in the age of widening gap between the rich and the poor.
It said nothing at all about whether the police could put you under surveillance at will, so long as they don't have to break into your home or car to install the surveillance device.
