By Greg Bartlett
How much do you really want someone to follow you and find out everything you’re doing, even if it is perfectly legitimate? Sometimes this age of technology can be disturbing, especially when the options that some items such as GPS devices offer may invade privacy to an unacceptable degree.
Many GPS devices allow the owner or person monitoring the item, vehicle, or individual to track every movement. For instance, a GPS tracking device in a vehicle will tell you where the car went, how fast it was traveling, every stop it made, how long it was at each stop, and, well, pretty much everything. Some parents like to use GPS tracking devices to monitor their teens, while other individuals want to find out where their car or their spouse has been.
Companies need to know where their drivers and vehicles are and use GPS to help manage their fleets. For most of these, the monitored individual is aware and willing to be tracked, or if not, the individual tracking him or her has the right to do it – such as putting a device in your own car whether or not the driver is aware and consenting to the device’s presence.
The privacy issue, for most people, arises when police use GPS devices to track a suspect. GPS tracking can provide police with a plethora of information, and it doesn’t take the police a lot of time or energy to get that information. The GPS device does most of the work for them. As the number of individuals arrested and brought to court because of evidence collected through GPS monitoring rises, more courts are struggling over the issue of warrantless tracking of individuals.
Do the police have the right to ignore an individual’s privacy and track the individual with GPS without a warrant?
The courts still aren’t in complete agreement about whether warrantless GPS tracking is legal. Some courts have ruled against warrantless tracking, saying that it violates state constitutions and the reasonable expectation of privacy. However, other courts have claimed that no warrant is needed to track a vehicle with GPS tracking.
Setting people’s minds at ease about whether or not their privacy will be invaded is simple – get a warrant first. Because of the necessary precautions the police must take first to obtain a warrant, most individuals are willing to let GPS devices be used to track people – including themselves – if the expectation of privacy is protected through a warrant.
