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This term, GPS tracking will come before the Supreme Court, who will hand down a decision regarding the legality of warrantless  GPS tracking. The case regards Antoine Jones, who was arrested in 2005 with 97 kilos of cocaine in his possession. He was convicted of drug trafficking and later of drug conspiracy. Some of the evidence used by prosecutors included information collected over the course of a month from a GPS tracker.

When police fit a GPS tracker on a car, following a suspect becomes a whole lot easier than it was back in the old days. They can, in theory, sit back and relax while the computers do the work. The car’s location is transmitted from tracking device to satellites to a computer, where an officer or dispatcher can watch the car travel the map.

It saves tons of time and energy, greatly reduces the chance of losing track of a suspect, and provides concrete data to produce in court. Really, it’s not designed to allow officers to sit back and relax, but to allow them to do more of their job protecting the public.
But the rise of technology is often cause for a rise in debate. Warrants were never required for good old-fashioned eyesight surveillance. In 1983, the Supreme Court determined that a warrant was also not required for using a beeper, which transmitted a radio signal, to track a suspect – and that was also a drug-related case. But in the case of GPS, various states and federal courts have been in disagreement about how much to regulate its use by law enforcement.
The Supreme Court has previously ruled that a warrant is not required for surveillance of a single trip. In Jones’ case, a federal judge granted a warrant for the GPS tracker if it was installed in Washington, D.C. within ten days, but it was installed in Maryland on the eleventh day. Jones’ defense argued that the FBI did not follow the conditions of the warrant. The US Court of Appeals in D.C. determined the length of the surveillance to be significantly more intrusive than the single trip allowance.
Clearly, the debate is complicated and has many facets to be examined. The Supreme Court has narrowed their current look to one question: do law enforcement officials need a warrant to use GPS tracking? That is the question the prosecution and defense must prepare their arguments about this time around.

Article Written by Kadence Vyra