The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that law enforcement’s warrantless installation of a Global Positioning System on a suspect’s car was unconstitutional is good news for privacy in the digital age.
The unanimous decision sends a strong signal the court is inclined to broadly apply Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure to new technology.
The decision should give pause to police and prosecutors who (without first obtaining a warrant) use all sorts of 21st century technology, such as cellphone tracking information and automated tollway data, to build their cases.
We hope it also energizes federal lawmakers who’ve introduced legislation setting boundaries on how the government can obtain and use geolocation data.
As electronic devices become more complex and their use more widespread, so too should the rules that protect our privacy. The ruling in this case was a strong opening volley.
The decision is layered, with justices taking different positions on different issues, but a majority concluded that when police attached a GPS device to the bumper of a suspected drug dealer’s vehicle, they conducted a “search.”
The long-term monitoring — tracking Antoine Jones’ moves for 28 days — violates the Fourth Amendment’s reasonable expectation of privacy, the court ruled.
Police did not have a valid warrant when they began tracking the movements of Jones, a Washington, D.C., nightclub owner. Jones was subsequently convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
However, the case is not without its caveats. The way the opinions are constructed, the government could be on firmer constitutional ground if it were to monitor someone’s movements on a short-term basis via GPS, even without a warrant.
Until this case, it was clear that statutes and case law governing electronic surveillance had not kept up with the march of technology.
Subsequently, law enforcement should look closely at its practices, and lawmakers should fill in the gaps with explicit rules about government use of advanced data.
Increasingly sophisticated technology should not be used to infringe on our privacy.
