Actually, I'd go the other route and say that it's not that bad after all.

The Supreme Court did not decide on the broader issue in the case, so it is still an open question as to whether the equivalent electronic tracking is prohibited under the 4th Amendment. What you have here is dicta in the majority opinion that is not law.

However, even further than that, you have the concurring opinions of five Supreme Court Justices (Alito, Sotomayor, Kagan, Breyer and Ginsburg) who all side with the idea that there should be 4th Amendment protections even in cases where there are no physical trespasses due to advancements in technology. This is much more important than the majority opinion on this issue. This gives you a better indication of how a court would rule on this issue in the future, especially since the issue already has a majority of the court behind a specific side already.

This is also the reason why lawyers tend to pay more attention to Kennedy's swing-vote concurrence opinions more so than the majority opinions in some cases.

RexTalionis: Actually, I'd go the other route and say that it's not that bad after all.

I think I agree. They did the right thing, and I don't think the idea of satellite tracking is nearly as simple as TFA wants to make it seem.

DamnYankees: I think I agree. They did the right thing, and I don't think the idea of satellite tracking is nearly as simple as TFA wants to make it seem.

B-b-but McGee makes it look so simple on NCIS!

From what I understand, the Court was only considering whether the GPS tracking was a search, not whether a warrant was required for it. (This was because the government had to concede that the search was done without a warrant; the police in this case screwed up and put the tracker on the car in Maryland 11 days after the warrant was signed... and the warrant said that the tracker had to be attached within 10 days in D.C. Oops.)

Forget it, citizen, the tracking will continue. You will sign up for it under the guise of being routed around traffic or bad neighborhoods, or for the convenience of automatically tracking the Starbucks nearest you. The insurance industry will use GPS to track you driving behavior for the purpose of assigning blame or getting out of paying claims. The cell phone industry already furnishes your location to law enforcement any time they ask. If you rent a car or drive a big rig, the fleet owners are already tracking you. The courts may slow down parts of the creeping surveillance temporarily, but that "privacy" thing is inevitably over.

Ennuipoet: DamnYankees: I think I agree. They did the right thing, and I don't think the idea of satellite tracking is nearly as simple as TFA wants to make it seem.

B-b-but McGee makes it look so simple on NCIS!

Yeah, and Abby makes you think that 40-year-old goths are all hot!

TV LIES!

FirstNationalBastard: Ennuipoet: DamnYankees: I think I agree. They did the right thing, and I don't think the idea of satellite tracking is nearly as simple as TFA wants to make it seem.

B-b-but McGee makes it look so simple on NCIS!

Yeah, and Abby makes you think that 40-year-old goths are all hot!

TV LIES!

I'm still shocked she's that old.

RexTalionis: Alito, Sotomayor, Kagan, Breyer and Ginsburg

Damn liberal justices upholding the Constitution. Who do they think they are? There's only the 2nd and 10th Amendments!

birchman: Does it really matter anyway? You're carrying a tracking device right now, it's called your cell phone. And if you think for one minute that the govt doesn't have a direct tap into the cell tower databases of every major phone provider, I have a bridge to sell you.

Not to mention the fact that most new cars have GPS now anyway, which I'm sure logs it's data. ONSTAR and similar services definitely do. It's already there so that data can just be confiscated as evidence, they don't even need to install it anymore. I'm sure they can rule that by buying the car with GPS you are consenting to being tracked.

Does the word "warrant" mean anything to you?

Scerpes: GAT_00: Damn liberal justices upholding the Constitution. Who do they think they are? There's only the 2nd and 10th Amendments!

That Justice Alito. He's a regular ACLU member.

He's the unpredictable one of the conservative side. Roberts, Scalia and Thomas are easily predictable. Alito usually rules with them, but not always.

PAPASandBEER: So, even though the framers of the constitution never contemplated the use of such advanced technology, we should just assume we know how they would have applied the words they wrote, representing ideas they did understand, to this situation? Or do we not care what the document means at all now?

As if we can even say with 100% (or even 90%) certainty what the Constitution meant to the attendees of the 1787 Constitutional Convention (i.e. the Framers) in the first place.

Scerpes: That's a good question, though. I'm not certain that you actually need a warrant to get Onstar data. It doesn't belong to you. It's harder to argue that you have an expectation of privacy in data that belongs to a third party. I would think that this is more akin to bank or telephone and that no warrant would be needed.

You absolutely can have an expectation of privacy with data that belongs to a third party. Think about your medical records - you don't 'own' them. They are the property of the hospital or your doctor.

herrDrFarkenstein: Use of technology has always treaded more heavily on the Fourth amendment than searches without. For example IR scans of houses to locate Marijuana grows.

Heat is not speech.

I really don't get the point you're trying to make here, since the discussion is about search and seizure and 4th Amendment jurisprudence and not speech and 1st Amendment jurisprudence.

Scerpes: And yet police don't need a warrant to get them. Yes...you have an expectation of privacy that has been created by statue, not by the Fourth Amendment.

I don't think that's true. Can you cite that?

TheDirtyNacho: Someone doesn't know how GPS works.

Oh jeeez. Yes I'm quite aware that GPS signals travel in one direction. Someone apparently doesn't appreciate the ubiquitous cell phone network back channel.

GAT_00: Scerpes: GAT_00: Damn liberal justices upholding the Constitution. Who do they think they are? There's only the 2nd and 10th Amendments!

That Justice Alito. He's a regular ACLU member.

He's the unpredictable one of the conservative side. Roberts, Scalia and Thomas are easily predictable. Alito usually rules with them, but not always.

So you're saying he's the Charlie Kelly of the Supreme Court.

herrDrFarkenstein: RexTalionis: herrDrFarkenstein: Use of technology has always treaded more heavily on the Fourth amendment than searches without. For example IR scans of houses to locate Marijuana grows.

Heat is not speech.

I really don't get the point you're trying to make here, since the discussion is about search and seizure and 4th Amendment jurisprudence and not speech and 1st Amendment jurisprudence.

You're recording somebody's communications.

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects"

Papers and effects are communications to be seized.

What the hell does that have to do with heat?