Email

The United States Supreme Court is getting ready to rule on the legality of warrantless GPS tracking scheduled for November 2011. The case at hand involves Washington nightclub owner Antoine Jones, who was charged with conspiracy to distribute cocaine. In anticipation of this historic court case, the Constitution Project, a bipartisan Washington think tank, issued a report on the legality and complexity of GPS tracking in law enforcement.

Some of the evidence used to convict Jones was obtained through warrantless GPS tracking. Some groups feel that police went outside the law and violated Antoine Jones’ privacy, while others, including the Obama administration, argue that a warrant is not needed when tracking suspects on public streets.  The warrantless GPS tracking debate can be considered “one instance of the much broader problem of regulating new technology,” explained Patricia Wald, a former chief judge on Washington’s federal appeals court and member of the Constitution Project.

The report emphasizes the usefulness of GPS tracking in law enforcement, “but the government should not have unchecked discretion to electronically track anyone, anywhere, and any time without cause.” The capabilities of GPS tracking “are now far more sophisticated and precise, and more significantly, they are capable of providing continuous monitoring and the compilation of vast databases of information about individuals’ daily movements.”

On the other hand, the Constitution Project suggests that a warrant need not be acquired for surveillance under 24 hours. “It’s one thing to track somebody for a day, and another thing to track every place he went for a month. That’s different qualitatively, not just quantitatively,” offered David Keene, co-chairman of the group that wrote the report and former chairman of the American Conservation Union.

Also among the panel that produced the report, was Asa Hutchinson, who was in charge of the DEA under the second Bush administration. “As the former head of the DEA, I understand the need for tracking bad guys, being able to secretly monitor a suspect’s movements. But this is a good balance between the needs of law enforcement and privacy issues,” said Hutchinson.

Article Written by Marisa O’Connor