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A Delaware Superior Court judge has just tossed out a criminal case against a man caught with ten pounds of marijuana. The court ruled that, even though the ten pounds of marijuana were found in his car by police in flagrant violation of the law, the GPS tracking device that police used to track his car for a month without a warrant constituted unreasonable search.

In February 2010, police believed that they saw “bags” (although not obviously drugs) being sold in New Jersey. The police then searched the seller’s car and found ten pounds of marijuana inside. This alone would have been fine – except for one minor detail.

The police had been tracking the marijuana dealer’s car for twenty days without a warrant.

The drug dealer’s defense attorney successfully argued that utilizing a GPS tracking device without a search warrant constituted unreasonable search. The superior court agreed with the defense attorney, citing: “The advance of technology will continue ad infinitum. An Orwellian state is now technologically feasible. Without adequate judicial preservation of privacy, there is nothing to protect our citizens from being tracked 24/7.”

The main reason that the GPS tracking was disallowed according to this superior court ruling was not that it utilized GPS technology per se. Instead, the reasons cited tended to focus on the fact that the police did not use a warrant before tracking the car.

So what does this mean for police agencies (especially those in Delaware)? It’s becoming more and more necessary to get a search warrant before tracking cars. At the same time, it’s becoming riskier for police to assume that they are in the right when placing GPS tracking technology on suspects’ vehicles. Court rulings — at least in many states — are keeping technology at bay when it comes to citizens’ privacy.

Greg Minton