Two New Fed GPS Trackers Found on SUV

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/11/gps-tracker-times-two/all

by d0ne • 15 years ago

251 211 15 years ago

DamnYuppie3• 15 years ago

I can't be the only one who finds this disturbing. I have no issue with the tracking devices or their use. What I find very concerning is that they do not require a warrant and there is no oversight as to their usage.

Bluem00• 15 years ago

Then you will be interested in this case being argued today in front of the Supreme Court: http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/united-states-v-j...

Here is the issue: Whether the Constitution allows police to put a tracking device on a car without either a warrant or the owner's permission; and whether the Constitution is violated when police use the tracking device to keep track of the car's whereabouts.

brador• 15 years ago

Non american here, what part of the constitution says they can't track a cars whereabouts?

nobody31415929• 15 years ago

Yes it would be so much better if a government law officer had to also get a rubber stamp on a form from a government court officer before doing this.

That would remove any concern over civil liberties

drivebyacct23• 15 years ago

The courts intrinsically have a fairly (relatively) high standard of evidence necessary to constitute "probable cause" to issue a warrant. Unless you're referring to FISA Courts/Warrants which are just a larger slap in the face than this.

Also, with that level of snark, I have to ask, what do you propose as an alternative?

bediger• 15 years ago

You're not the only one. Every person who spends more than af ew minutes thinking about the issue finds it disturbing. Warrants and oversight will get in place eventually, or this sort of thing will warp society in a bad way.

rtrunck• 15 years ago

I wonder what the implications would be should a citizen or group place tracking devices on police vehicles. Though I'm sure they'd have some law in their arsenal to call that a crime.

rdtsc2• 15 years ago

Ha! I know someone who did that. Built transmitters and attached them to police cars in their small town. He could get a warning when a police car was approaching. Not a GPS device or anything -- just a simple proximity alert. And that was in the mid 90s.

itg2• 15 years ago

Some states have a law in their arsenal if you take a video recording of an officer. Even if they don't, some pissed off cop can just slap on the usual "disturbing the peace" or "resisting arrest" nonsense on you. There is too much hero worship for law enforcement and they need to be more accountable and held to higher standards.

tptacek41• 15 years ago

So this would have been a great comment if you just left it at the first sentence, because it's true that there's an ongoing legal battle in a bunch of states about the right to record police officers doing their jobs. My home state of Illinois is one of the worst offenders here. I note, happily, that the police are tending to lose these fights in court.

The rest of your comment saps your credibility.

"Some pissed off cop can just" &c &c &c --- well, let's not discuss what the police should be able to do at all then, because this is logic that inevitably ends up with us throwing up our hands. Or, because we're on Hyperbolic News, having a debate about whether the citizens of a truly free society need police at all.

nobody31415929• 15 years ago

The main implication would presumably be the discovery of an optimal travelling-salesman solution between all the donut shops in the city

losvedir• 15 years ago

That's a really interesting idea. The article says

"The administration, which is attempting to overturn a lower court ruling that threw out a drug dealer’s conviction over the warrantless use of a tracker, argues that citizens have no expectation of privacy when it comes to their movements in public so officers don’t need to get a warrant to use such devices."

I don't immediately see why that wouldn't apply to law enforcement cars in public, as well. It would be a boon to criminals, though, unfortunately. (Hm, which now makes me wonder if it could be happening already by more advanced criminal organizations?)

__david__3• 15 years ago

> It would be a boon to criminals, though, unfortunately.

Only if it were real-time. If there were a 7 day lag on the data being publicized it would prove the point without giving the possibility of using the data to evade police in the moment.

mindcrime4• 15 years ago

Yeah, I had a similar thought. And along with that, I think we need to get some people together and start a new "Government Information Awareness"[1][2] project. Turnabout is fair play, ya know?

[1] http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2003/gia.html

[2] http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1011439/mit-launche...

And on this note... does anybody actually know what happened to the original GIA site? Did they just get bored with the idea, or were they pressured into shutting it down, or what?

__david__3• 15 years ago

I've always wanted to put a camera outside my house and record all the cars that pass on the street, maybe do some license plate detection "vision" stuff. Basically have my own citizen's traffic cam. I'd love the idea of a citizen held Government Information Bureau where you could publish such information.

tptacek41• 15 years ago

In Illinois, the consequences would probably include the felony charge of obstruction of justice. The state has an obvious interest in ensuring that criminals cannot track the location of patrol cars in real time; this is part of the implied social contract that recognizes that citizens aren't paying the price to put a police car on literally every city block, but rather pursuing spot enforcement.

nobody31415929• 15 years ago

Presumably if you discover a suspect package under your vehicle you would call the fire service and the bomb squad.

(Then quietly also call the local news service.)

stefs• 15 years ago

they feds would probably charge you for destroying their property.

(only half joking)

nobody31415929• 15 years ago

There was a famous case in the UK in the 70s

The security services bugged the HQ of the Communist Party of Great Britain (because the UK doesn't have a bill of rights it's legal to be a commie there). The members found the bug and destroyed it. They were then prosecuted (succesfully) for destroying government property - even though the government denied planting the bug, and in those days even denied the existence of the security services.

Their case was that the defendants believed it was government property and therefore their intent was to destroy government property.

So if you have a reason to be tracked by the police then it would be a crime to destroy it. But if you have no reason to believe you have done anything wrong then it's more reasonable to believe it's a terrorist bomb and you should call the FBI/DHS/Army etc

dotBen• 15 years ago

This is an example of one of those situations where it doesn't pay to be 'over clever'.

If you call the bomb squad to report a bomb under your car but as a technology-inclined person/geek know full well it's a GPS receiver then you're committing all sorts of illegality there.

nobody31415929• 15 years ago

Only if you have been stupid enough to disturb a potential car bomb to see whats inside.

Back when I worked for a defense company our cars were checked with mirrors on sticks everytime we went to work, we had special police numbers to call if we ever saw any suspicious activity around our cars or received a suspicious package at home.

Although they weren't very understanding when I was away on a trip and my wife opened a package containing a microcontroller I ordered - and started an alert!

ceejayoz• 15 years ago

I can't imagine these things have "GPS RECEIVER" stamped on the outside. How are they going to prove you knew it was a GPS?

swasheck2• 15 years ago

Plus, you don't call the bomb squad. You report a "suspicious-looking item" on your car to local law-enforcement.

antidaily• 15 years ago

He apparently came under surveillance after the FBI received a vague tip from someone who said Afifi might be a threat to national security

So one guy gets GPS'd because of a vague tip and the other guy because his cousin might be a drug dealer. Yikes.

gvb• 15 years ago

To clarify, in this particular case the connection was stronger than what you state. He bought the SUV from his cousin and the tracking device showed up shortly after he drove his cousin’s wife to Tijuana, I assume with the SUV in question.

While we can debate whether this is sufficient cause for a planted tracking device, the connection between him and his cousin is a lot less casual than what you state.

bokchoi• 15 years ago

Fine, then get a judge to issue a warrant.

ck23• 15 years ago

He apparently came under surveillance after the FBI received a vague tip from someone who said Afifi might be a threat to national security.

Without exaggeration, this is exactly how innocent people, some of them teenagers, ended up in Gitmo (and are still there) via vague tips from people who didn't like their neighbors and decided to deal with it by reporting them.

wavephorm• 15 years ago

Terrorists are the new communists. Merely being accused is a crime.

onemoreact4• 15 years ago

I have thought that would be a great way to attack the system. However, I suspect accusing large numbers of people would simply create suffering and would do little to create real change. Worse yet it would probably be used to promote increased monitoring because look at the X number of suspects out there.

Still, it's sad to think the most effective / damaging / and possibly profitable approach for a risk averse terrorist might be to pretend to be a overly helpful.

DamnYuppie3• 15 years ago

Sounds eerily similar to the Spanish Inquisition and the Salem Witch hunts.

rdtsc2• 15 years ago

The thing they don't realize is that this kind of attitude can and will be exploited by evil people to exact personal revenge on others. From a system-wide point of view, this irrational crazy behavior is a vulnerability. And it just begs to be exploited.

If you want to burry your neighbor -- submit an anonymous tip about them being a terrorist, child pornographer or a illegal music downloader. With a bit of luck, their life will be completely ruined.

I remember stories from Soviet Union how neighbors would make up stories about each other and denounce them as conducting anti-party propaganda, because say, they insulted them or moved the fence too close. It was the amazing ease and predictability with which this process worked.

bh422222• 15 years ago

This is exactly how "law enforcement" used to work behind the iron curtain. An anonymous tip that you were anti-communist could get you arrested.

jasonlotito4• 15 years ago

He wasn't arrested. He was observed. So, this is not "exactly" how it used to work behind the iron curtain.

raganwald5• 15 years ago

That is very different than how things used to work on this side of the iron curtain:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism#House_Committee_on_...

tptacek41• 15 years ago

The teenagers you're talking about were taken from Afghanistan, right? Not San Jose.

People make comments about people from the US being "sent to Gitmo" for daring to stand up to authority here, but it's worth noting that nobody has been taken from inside the US and held in Guantanamo.

Having noted that, I think we find we don't even need to litigate Gitmo here. Which is a good thing, because I think you'll have a hard time finding a lot of people to disagree with you in interesting ways about it. Of course military and intelligence agencies shouldn't have taken innocent people from Afghanistan and stuck them in a brig without due process rights. Thankfully, that has little to do with what the FBI does in San Jose.

DamnYuppie3• 15 years ago

The issue I have with that is as it stands right now how would any know if this is true or not? The NSA and FBI can effectively keep things secret as they don't have to disclose all that they are doing.

ck23• 15 years ago

nobody has been taken from inside the US and held in Guantanamo

No, we avoid this problem by killing natural born US citizens outside the country before they can be put on trial. Far easier politically that way.

Why does it even matter WHERE a teenager is from if they are innocent? Why would you imprison and fly them out of their own country before you know if they are actually guilty of anything? Then treat them so badly over years that you can never release them again because they will become a terrorist against you for the way you treated them?

jasonlotito4• 15 years ago

> Without exaggeration, this is exactly how innocent people, some of them teenagers, ended up in Gitmo

But that is exaggeration. The tip led to him being observed, not being ported off to Gitmo. So it's no where near being "exactly" like these innocent people being sent to Gitmo. If anything, your only hurting your case by sensationalizing it. Does it not stand on it's own?

That this was done with a GPS device as opposed to being tailed by people doesn't strike me as a big difference (if only that the GPS device is more accurate and less invasive).

pyre3• 15 years ago

  > That this was done with a GPS device as opposed to
  > being tailed by people doesn't strike me as a big
  > difference

It's easier to do at scale.

What's the difference between having a cop watch a street corner vs installing a security camera? You can install a lot of security cameras for the same cost as hiring a police officer or FBI agent.

It's the same case here. They can track a lot more people via GPS devices when they don't have to pay for agents (agent salaries + car + gas) to tail someone.

I mean, at ~$400 a pop, how many GPS devices can you get for the cost of a single agent? And a list of GPS coordinates is something that can easily be processed automatically to look for patterns.

drivebyacct23• 15 years ago

I've been arguing against this stuff for over 6 years since I got heavily involved in discussions of the Patriot Act and the erosion of the Fourth Amendment in policy debate. This has been going on for a long time in various forms (FISA courts/warrants, National Security Letters, widespread [near universal] wiretapping, etc).

I'm not sure what to do about it, or more importantly how to get people to care. It's like the article a while back (I'll try to find the source on it) that quoted a huge percentage of people as being opposed to government survelliance who only two years earlier had vehemently defended it as necessary for security. It's called a slippery slope for a reason, and every time the Patriot Act it is reauthorized without consideration is a slap in the face to the Founding Fathers who refused to sign the Constitution without a Bill of Rights.

The thing that bothers me the most is the "Conservatives" (who are supposed to be in favor of small, unintrusive government) that hook-and-line fall for the "Patriotism" guise and excuse these government intrusions with, at times, absurd leaps of logic (that often fly in the face of evidence and statistics from the very organizations carrying out these actions).

protomyth3• 15 years ago

Have you actually talked to any of the "conservatives" in the Tea Party? Most of them are super fed up with the TSA and all this crap. Heck, here is an example from today: http://www.redstate.com/tabithahale/2011/11/08/no-tsa-i-will...

If you notice, there is a Democrat in office who hasn't ended this crap, but kept it going in new ways.

onemoreact4• 15 years ago

As long as the "Tea Party" is just a vocal minority within the Republican party there is little meaningful difference.

Or can you actually point to an elected official that says, let's END social security, medicare, and farm subsidies, cut the DoD budget by 80% and gut the rest of the federal budget?

tptacek41• 15 years ago

I'm fed up with the TSA. Everyone is fed up with the TSA. The TSA is a joke. It's clearly not a "liberal" or "conservative" issue.

But I'm not prepared to lump everything that law enforcement does in with the TSA. One of the biggest problems with the TSA is that they're not a real law enforcement agency; they're lowest-bidder contractors and subcontractors that exist almost entirely for the purpose of making people feel safer, because anything as annoying as the TSA must be making us safer.

Let's be as specific as we can.

tptacek41• 15 years ago

If you'd like to take a shot at it, feel free to try to convince me that I should be concerned about warrantless GPS tracking of subject cars.

* I'm a good-faith commenter on HN and not inclined to troll you or piss you off for no reason.

* I'm a liberal Democrat.

* I donate money to the ACLU.

* I do not think it is unreasonable for law enforcement agencies to designate, during the course of an actual investigation of a specific target, individual cars for GPS surveillance:

- so long as removing the devices if they're detected isn't a crime

- and research and development of technologies that shield cars from GPS monitoring isn't banned

My reasoning: the police already have the clear and reasonable right to surveil cars from a distance either by ground patrol cars or aerial surveillance. That low-tech surveillance, which has never required a warrant, is actually more intrusive than a GPS device, in that it records your actual actions at each location.

I'm not generally opposed to things that allow law enforcement to do a better job with fewer resources.

I don't want to get into the Patriot Act or anything; we're talking about GPS transponders, which is a specific concept we can actually get our heads around. So let's try!

cobrausn• 15 years ago

Should they be able to plant a gps tracker on your clothing without a warrant? After all, they could get the same information by just following you. This is just easier.

Why would it be any different than your car? It's not actually on your person, per se, it's on your clothing, which is different. Sure, the resolution of the determined movement is higher, but they could have an agent tail you to the same effect if you left your car.

The line we draw in the sand is somewhat arbitrary, but it has to be there. I'm generally for putting the line further up the slippery slope.

chc4• 15 years ago

The thing is, the powers that different parties have are all based on a delicate system of checks and balances. Allowing the police to more efficiently pursue people is not necessarily desirable, and in fact many laws and Constitutional amendments (such as the whole idea of a warrant) are explicitly intended to clamp down on police efficiency. It would be much more efficient if the justice system didn't have to worry about guilt or individual rights at all, but that is obviously undesirable.

Previously, their ability to monitor people was limited by physical resources. This technology largely eliminates that constraint and allows them to conduct surveillance in cases where they never would have felt it was worth their time before. For roughly the same amount of work that tailing a suspect traditionally would have required, they can now track everybody he's come in contact with.

So the question is, did we really mean for police to have unlimited surveillance powers, or was it simply never considered before because natural limits always existed? I would argue the latter.

This is similar to how the Second Amendment cannot reasonably be read as allowing individuals to own thermonuclear warheads. That is obviously outside its intended scope, even though a literal reading of "right to bear arms" would appear to allow it.

jerf• 15 years ago

"I'm not generally opposed to things that allow law enforcement to do a better job with fewer resources."

While I freely concede I'm making a "balance" argument and as such there can be reasonable disagreement on where the correct balance is, there is a bound on how far you want to take that. It is not a bad thing that law enforcement takes some effort, as it serves as a sort of natural counter on excessively zealous enforcement, one far more effective than any law or ACLU lawsuit could ever be. The goal isn't to make the police job as easy as possible, the goal is to serve justice.

This makes it easy to keep an eye on a much larger number of people with little increase in manpower, and the problem there is that by increasing the amount of data, while at the same time reducing the quality of the priors on the data that the person (or perhaps rather the vehicle) in question has committed some sort of crime, you will start encountering the classic signal processing problem where you will inevitably start to get more false positives. Requiring a warrant to drop these on somebody's car, and therefore requiring some sort of prior probable cause, isn't just good civil liberties (because those false positives hurt real people), it's good statistics.

Doing "the same thing as before, only more easily" is still an important qualitative change in law enforcement and security in general, and I think you need an argument more powerful than that to justify the change in question.

asmithmd13• 15 years ago

Just about every car built in the past 3 or 4 years has a GPS tracker installed at the factory. It is called OnStar in GM cars or Sync in Ford cars.

Should any police officer be allowed to view the location records for any vehicle without a warrant? How about view all the records for all vehicles?

drivebyacct23• 15 years ago

>* I do not think it is unreasonable for law enforcement agencies to designate, during the course of an actual investigation of a specific target, individual cars for GPS surveillance:

I don't understand where you draw the line. You don't think it's necessary for them to get a warrant, but you don't think they should be able to at-will tap into any OnStar system. Those, in my eyes, are virtually the same thing. The standard of "probable cause" has been around for a long time and it is in place because of the language of the Fourth Amendment which protects against "unreasonable" searches and seizures.

saucetenuto2• 15 years ago

I'm not terribly worried by GPS surveillance as described in the article. One objection does occur to me, though:

Watching suspects the hard way, with patrol cars and binoculars, is really expensive for the police department. They're forced by their own internal economies to gather data only on people they're deeply interested in. That, I'd argue, is why it's ok to follow people without a warrant. GPS transponders are much cheaper, so the police have less motivation to focus on only the most important suspects.

LXicon• 15 years ago

ground patrol cars or aerial surveillance require a person to operate them. GPS tracking allows for tracking many targets at once and then sifting through the data to find "bad guys".

the added costs of having a person track a target means more care is taken to avoid false positives. the person doing the tracking can also dis-regard irrelevant data that an automated system might erroneously use.

imagine some program that automatically sifted through a source of ubiquitous GPS data which actually did catch 100% of all terrorist attempts in New York in 2010 (the Times Square bombing attempt). what if that system meant 100 false positives were added to the no-fly-list because they drove on street X on date Y followed by street Z within 2 days (or some other such algorithm) when (if) someone asks about these no-fly-list additions they are simply told that the suspects exhibited behavior that was consistent with the Times Square bomber... if you are not a terrorist, you have nothing to hide!

anigbrowl6• 15 years ago

I'll address a couple of points you missed (edit: but which you have addressed elsewhere in the thread - just wanted to gather it up in place rather than post 10 times):-

a. If putting a GPS tracker on my car* involves venturing onto my driveway during the night, then you're intruding on the curtilage of my dwelling. The fact that the mail carrier or meter reader is allowed to do so does not mean that I grant the police a free invite onto the easily accessible parts of my property. This is the basic issue that the Supreme Court will take up today.

* not that I actually have a car - a cunning anti-surveillance measure, if I say so myself

b. Even if I park my car on the street, shouldn't the police have to deal with economic scarcity like everyone else, and prioritize whether or not I am worthy of investigation? If technology as a matter of convenience is acceptable grounds for carrying out surveillance, why not require all cars to be fitted with GPS trackers that record their position and can be read out wirelessly by any passing cop who thinks he recognizes your car from a recent tip? If we don't want to force people to buy GPS devices, then why not make such GPS data automatically searchable? Google Latitude records all my movements, should the police have access to that without a warrant for reasons of convenience?

c. In any of these cases, should we mandate that the information be public? After all, if a crime is sufficiently interesting, the media will sue for access to all evidence or to broadcast the court proceedings on first amendment grounds (spurious ones if you ask me; I've soured on TV trials). Since the evidence will become public anyway, what interest does the individual have in keeping it private once the state has decided to inspect it? No jurisprudence says that you have any property interest in your privacy, and it's not hard to construct an argument for any given search being reasonable. I've seen the presence of raindrops on a moving vehicle at 3am offered and accepted as reasonable grounds for a search (which correct intuition helped to catch a murderer fleeing the scene of a crime, as it turned out).

d. If almost any search is reasonable and can become a matter of public record by default, is there not an argument that possession of a GPS device in a car or phone that is deliberately turned off, disabled, or left behind by the user constitutes circumstantial evidence of intent in criminal or even tort cases? As you know, the threshold for establishing intent or knowledge in criminal cases can be quite low if it's not the sole fact in question, and it's lower again in civil litigation. If I can demonstrate a pattern of GPS use on your part that is temporarily interrupted during a period overlapping the commission of a crime that was reasonably accessible from your last recorded location, isn't there a basis for suspecting that you wished to conceal your movements?

e. Even if a warrant is required for me to get hold of your phone records or gain access to the contents of your phone, doesn't the fact that I could snoop your phone use over your shoulder whenever you pull it out in public compromise any expectation of privacy that you have when operating your phone in public? In other words, if I approach you while using your phone and suddenly order you to hand it over for inspection on the grounds that I saw something which appeared suspicious to me on the screen, are you entitled to lock your phone by hitting the power button? After all, your phone was open to the world (in plain view), and that's why I noticed something suspicious about it. Your locking of the device would then seem to constitute interference with a lawful search...

Sure, I'm playing slippery-slope here, but these are all cognizable arguments and I have heard as much and more from various conservatives and police officers over the years. I'm rather conservative myself where jurisprudence is concerned, but GPS tracking strikes me as an active rather than a passive sort of surveillance, not least because it necessarily involves interference with property or person to plant the tracking device.

Thrymr2• 15 years ago

How about: they are tampering with your property (your car). I think that is inherently intrusive. If, say, they were automatically tracking your vehicle with software that recognized it in traffic cams in public, that would not be intrusive (though some may still find it creepy).

What if this technology was cheap enough to slap one on everybody's car? If you don't need a warrant, why not? Can the feds install a tracker on every car in the USA? It's a lot cheaper than following everyone.

There is a mechanism for targeting specific individuals in the course of an actual investigation. It is getting a warrant.

nkurz• 15 years ago

Thomas --

I mostly agree, but I think it makes more sense to flip the question: what do we lose by requiring a warrant to attach the device? If it's a valid criminal investigation, it seems like this would be easy to obtain, and having this small hurdle seems like it would help prevent abuse for political or personal agenda.

For me, the difference between attaching a temporary removable device and traditional visual surveillance is that individuals are allowed to monitor the coming and goings of vehicles in public, but are not allowed to trespass to do so. While I might be OK with an agency deciding that a vehicle should be monitored after following a written procedure, I'm not OK with individual officers making this decision without central approval. Or do you think it should be legal for individuals to do attach their own devices?

staunch• 15 years ago

For me it's clearly a violation of my rights the second an agent of the state lays a finger on my property without oversight and due process.

gojomo4• 15 years ago

Conversion of a person's own property into a device used against their interests, and a possible source of testimony against them, is sufficiently like entering a locked premises, opening a closed purse, or active wiretapping that it should be subject to the same procedural protections.

This seems especially true if the attachment requires concealment via modification to the property, camouflage, tools, or splicing into the existing electrical system. But anything which follows the person onto their own private property and perhaps even into their home garage – as an attached bug necessarily does – has crossed what I see as a bright line between 'surveillance in public' and 'surveillance in private'.

Bdennyw• 15 years ago

"I'm not generally opposed to things that allow law enforcement to do a better job with fewer resources"

To that I reply "A policeman's job is only easy in a police state" from Orson Well's "A Touch of Evil"

sixtofour• 15 years ago

If there's legitimate suspicion of criminal activity, a police force should have no trouble obtaining a warrant. We have warrants so that the police do not operate without over-site and legitimacy.

If requiring warrants lets some criminals slip away, that's too bad. You can only approach 100% police success in a police state.

Natsu2• 15 years ago

> If you'd like to take a shot at it, feel free to try to convince me that I should be concerned about warrantless GPS tracking of subject cars.

Without a warrant, you open the door to them being used for harassment. For example, by people who have videotaped police brutality and the like can be followed around in ways that would be impractical otherwise. With a warrant, they at least have to justify their use and it would create a paper trail that would document any abuse of power.

I think it's an interesting technology (though the devices are way too conspicuous if anyone goes looking...) and I see no reason to ban them. But I think there's a long enough history of bad apples in the police department abusing things such that we should be very careful about giving out grants of unchecked power. Today it's a GPS. Tomorrow, they might plant cameras or other devices, saying they didn't need a warrant for the GPS, so they shouldn't need one for any other device.

Sure, they've always been able to just tail you with no warrant, but that required more of an investment of their time, which limits how badly (and covertly) it could be abused. With technology removing these limits, the potential for abuses widens, and so it's reasonable to ask them to justify its use.

If a warrant is too burdensome for whatever reason, I could at least be satisfied if someone was required to articulate the reason for its use and submit that paperwork to the courts, without requiring their approval, prior to attaching the device, so that they would have someone watching over their shoulder for abuse without impeding all the legitimate uses of this technology. But I see no reason to grant them unchecked power.

Please don't misinterpret this as implying that all cops can't be trusted or something like that, though. I've known good cops. I lived in a small town and pretty much the whole force looked after us after something terrible happened. But I also know what happens when things go wrong; I've seen the recordings of corrupt cops and the brutality videos. I just think there's a happy medium where we check for abuse without tying the hands of the honest cops who are trying to protect us.

maxerickson• 15 years ago

Is it really reasonable that the police can engage in extended surveillance without a warrant? If I do it I might get arrested for stalking, so it doesn't seem outlandish to have the police involve a judge in the process.

The warrant process also happens to be agnostic to advances in data harvesting technology (i.e., even if omni-tracking like you speak of below becomes the norm, the use of the data in an investigation or prosecution could still be mediated with warrants).

__david__3• 15 years ago

I would add that the target shouldn't be liable for disabling, losing, or accidentally breaking said device if it is detected. I think basically they have to view it as giving it to me if they stick it on my property. I want the right to take it apart and figure out how it works.

mattdeboard• 15 years ago

Because warrants (read: judicial oversight) at least notionally serve as a hedge against the use of government power against the people. If that is not sufficient enough reason then we do not have enough philosophical common ground to ever come to an agreement.

brigade• 15 years ago

Others have explained why this is not equivalent to low-tech tailing, so I won't repeat them.

Instead, what precisely do you find so onerous about requiring a warrant for GPS surveillance? And would you support private citizens using these devices to the same extent?

Anyway, I don't think anyone's reasonably arguing for banning this technology. Requiring a warrant is still going to allow law enforcement to to do a better job with fewer resources; I truly don't see why it would be such a big hassle.

Duff• 15 years ago

The point is, the GPS transponder lowers the bar for supporting surveillance to the level that widespread abuse is possible.

This is particularly true of smaller police or quasi-police organizations whose professional standards aren't quite up to snuff. For example, the NYS Department of Labor placed a GPS tracking unit on the personal vehicle of an employee suspected of misconduct. They are now facing a big lawsuit.

In the good old days, the police could tail a suspect 24x7, but they would need the clearance to commit staff and overtime to the effort. If a detective goes to his Captain looking to follow around some random kid for weeks, he needs justification.

Today, you need to buy a cheap device and spend a few minutes planting and retrieving it. That minimal expense allows you to track a subject with complete impunity for weeks.

The inevitable result of all of this is going to be widespread abuse. A free society cannot remain so if citizens cannot conduct their affairs without looking over their shoulder (or under their car) at every moment. We need judicial oversight to answer the age-old question: "Who watches the watchmen?"

learc8312• 15 years ago

There is a difference here. Police can follow you monitoring your whereabouts in public.

They don't follow you onto private property, this device can do that.

Also the only reason they put these on cars instead of on a person, say in a briefcase or a watch is b/c miniaturized active tracking tech isn't cheap/available enough--soon enough it will be.

Lagged2Death• 15 years ago

I do not think it is unreasonable for law enforcement agencies to designate, during the course of an actual investigation of a specific target, individual cars for GPS surveillance...

Okay, so why not require a warrant for clear-cut cases like you suggest here? There's a legal mechanism, a historical precedent, a best-practice way of handling this sort of privacy intrusion. What is the compelling reason for throwing all that away?

I'm not generally opposed to things that allow law enforcement to do a better job with fewer resources.

Do you honestly imagine that a police department that adopts warrant-less GPS trackers will lay off some of the force it no longer needs for stakeouts and surveillance?

I don't.

This is a more efficient way of doing surveillance, but it isn't something that will be used to "do a better job with fewer resources." It will be used - it is being used - to cast a wider net, to launch larger fishing expeditions, just like every single piece of surveillance technology and surveillance-related legislation in living memory.

mindcrime4• 15 years ago

If I ever find one of these things on my car, I'm taking it off and putting it on an over-the-road tanker truck, or a Greyhound bus or something. I'll deal with the fallout, whatever.

Actually, wait... on second thought, an even better plan would be to disassemble it, and hack it to report bogus data. Like, have it show me doing nothing but driving around in circles around Groom Lake for hours on end, then "magically" transporting to Edwards AFB.

nomdeplume• 15 years ago

I'm throwing mine at the concrete at high velocity, then spray painting a middle-finger gesture next to the debris.

raganwald5• 15 years ago

You are describing crimes. If you have reason to believe the device was placed by law enforcement, tampering with its function to deceive them is a criminal offence.

It’s far better to work to make such activities illegal than to do your complaining from behind bars.

mindcrime4• 15 years ago

If you have reason to believe the device was placed by law enforcement, tampering with its function to deceive them is a criminal offence.

No, it's against "the law." It's hardly a crime.

But semantic distinctions aside, I really don't care if it's a crime or not. If the US governments fucks with me and pisses me off, I'm going to do what I'm going to do.

It’s far better to work to make such activities illegal than to do your complaining from behind bars.

That's not really an either/or thing. They haven't (yet, as far as I know) put one of these on my car, and I work on making things like this illegal though the political process . And I'll continue to do so, up until the (hypothetical) day that I wind up behind bars for fucking with one of their silly little tracking devices.

All that said, I can't imagine them ever getting a conviction in a jury trial, on a charge of "tampering with a government owned device" if it's not labeled or anything. It's totally reasonable to say "Oh, I found this thing on my car and I didn't know what it was so I took it off and threw it away" or "I knew what it was, but I assumed my crazy stalker ex-girlfriend put it there," etc. Getting any reasonable jury to convict on this would be insanely difficult.

josscrowcroft• 15 years ago

Land of the free, indeed.

georgieporgie• 15 years ago

driving a Crown Victoria with tinted windows.

Well, the GPS thing might be up for debate, but tinted front side windows are illegal in CA. :-)

calloc• 15 years ago

Not if you are on the FBI's payroll :P

alirov• 15 years ago

Almost true. You can have the front side windows tinted as long as 70% of light still gets through. Which in actuality is fairly close to not tinting at all. The windshield of course can't have any tint whatsoever except on the top 4 inches.

feralchimp2• 15 years ago

Two inevitable events that will bring this situation to a head:

1. Citizens start throwing these devices into large bodies of water.

2. Armed citizen returns to vehicle at night, in mall or office parking lot, as suspicious man stands up from behind citizen's rear wheel well. Citizen draws down on Federal officer, one or both parties end up dead.

bgentry• 15 years ago

Single page view: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/11/gps-tracker-times-t...

yock• 15 years ago

Quite frankly, I don't think any legitimate argument can be made that this kind of surveillance is Constitutional. That's not the most interesting thought evoked by this story though.

How many of you that are outraged by this leave location services enabled on your smartphone 24/7? How do hourly location reports compare to the endless stream of information available from your dormant smartphone? A stream that can be provided to police in real-time without leaving a single shred of evidence. At least a little black box is minimally visible, has a finite power source, and has to be placed and maintained by a person who can be observed.

Thrymr2• 15 years ago

I'm not against the authorities being able to subpoena my cell phone records through legal action. I would be opposed to my provider passing all my records to any agency without warrant or subpoena.

leoh• 15 years ago

Does anyone know if these things actually transmit as well as record?

aphyr• 15 years ago

Yes, they transmit their location on regular intervals (from the article: every hour) via the cell network.

feralchimp2• 15 years ago

Does the FBI also pull this stunt with cars tagged with consulate plates? That is, who is offered more civil rights: American citizens on American soil, or employees of foreign governments on American soil?

Jun8• 15 years ago

I think a great way to deal with this problem in a hacker type of way would be to create and post schematics for a cheap device (e.g. using your old cell phone or other types of old consumer electronics devices) to detect the presence of these devices. A big motivation of using these covert devices is that they work, i.e. the average tracked person is unaware of them. If this fact can be nullified, then law enforcement people may be less willing to use such tactics.

xxbondsxx• 15 years ago

GPS signals are everywhere, so the only thing you could intercept would be the outgoing transponder signal. This could be masked as almost anything.... random cell phone packets, radio waves with local pickup, etc. Hell, they could even just manually retrieve the data once in a while when your car is parked outside your house.

So it might be hard to execute, but certainly still a good idea. I just wanted to point out that GPS logging is entirely passive; only the transmission can be detected.

vl• 15 years ago

>I just wanted to point out that GPS logging is entirely passive

This is not entirely true, for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_detector_detector

It appears that many, if not all GPS devices use superheterodyne receiver as well.

shareme• 15 years ago

I think its time for a Hacker Kit to disable GPS tracking units that LAw Enforcement uses. Make it so simple that common motorist can use..and make it viral by having a open source license..we outnumber law enforcement by large numbers..and they do not have the manpower to face that set of circumstances

giardini• 15 years ago

Seems that wrapping it in several layers of foil and tossing it in a waste cntainer would be enough to keep 'em busy for awhile. After some handling the foil would likely come off and they could retrieve their toy: "Why are we following a garbage truck, now?" No fun digging though the city dump though.

kristopolous• 15 years ago

I once had a paranoid schizophrenic friend that suggested such things were happening to him. I think it's a bad move when what were previously paranoid delusions start manifesting themselves as accepted realities.

jasongullickson• 15 years ago

Out of curiosity, would something like this render the problem moot? http://www.meritline.com/super-mini-cigarette-lighter-gps-bl...

locusm• 15 years ago

Why not have some fun with it - give it to an interstate trucker, or to your Aunt who is heading off to Australia...

Two New Fed GPS Trackers Found on SUV

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