Eric Hanson was recently convicted of fatally shooting his parents and bludgeoning to death his sister and brother-in-law. David Lee Foltz, Jr. is currently charged with abduction and sexual battery, and is suspected of eleven other attacks on women in the area. These two men are from different areas and face different crimes, yet both have one thing in common: each of these men’s whereabouts during the commission of the charged crime was pinpointed by a Global Positioning System (GPS).
Using technology to track and pinpoint a person’s location is not a novel concept in the American criminal justice system. Over the past few years, it has become increasingly common for investigators to place navigation devices on a suspect’s vehicle in effort to track the suspect’s movements. GPS devices operate by receiving signals from a satellite network and using that information to calculate the precise location, speed, and direction of the device. However, concerns are being raised that GPS tracking amounts to an illegal search and seizure, since investigators rarely obtain a warrant prior to attaching a GPS device to a suspect’s car.
While the Supreme Court has yet to directly address the issue of GPS tracking, the 7th Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals has ruled against a defendant who claimed that the furtive placement of a GPS device on his car amounted to a violation of his 4th Amendment rights, which forbids unreasonable searches and seizures. The Court of Appeals equated the tracking of a suspect by a GPS device to the police physically following a car or monitoring the car through safety cameras, both of which are not illegal searches. It was held that as long as the police did not engage in mass surveillance, the police were not conducting an illegal search, or violating one’s 4th Amendment rights, by placing a GPS device on the exterior of a suspect’s car without a warrant.
GPS tracking has helped capture criminals and provided evidence at trial to convict them. It is also a safer and more reliable means for police to tail a suspect. There is little doubt that GPS tracking is useful, but if police are not required to obtain a warrant prior to placing a GPS device on a suspect’s car, who’s to say that the police will never misuse or abuse the privilege? Since a warrant is not needed and potential police misconduct is not a major concern, it seems “logical” to go ahead and place a GPS device on every car so that when the police “suspect” someone, they can immediately access data about their whereabouts and save the three seconds it takes for them to place the device on the car. Furthermore, since GPS tracking is the supposed equivalent of merely physically following or monitoring a person, why can’t a private citizen place a GPS device on anyone’s car to track their movements, as long as they are not participating in mass surveillance? As GPS devices become increasingly popular and cheaper, these questions and the debate surrounding GPS tracking are bound to become louder. In the end, there is always one question that remains at the root of all new technology being utilized by the criminal justice system: how much privacy is one willing to give up to feel and be protected and safe?
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