Supreme Court Reviews Warrantless GPS Tracking

The Supreme Court heard arguments today in United States v. Jones, a case that represents the evolution of modern technology in the face of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure.

In September 2005, police planted a GPS device on the undercarriage of Antoine Jones’ vehicle. Jones, the owner of a Washington, D.C. nightclub, was suspected of cocaine trafficking. An initial warrant obtained by law enforcement officials allowed for the installation of the device within a 10-day period, to be installed inside the District of Columbia. However, officials took 11 days to install the device, and installed in in Maryland, thus rendering the plant and the monitoring of the device warrantless.

Officials then used the device to track Jones’ whereabouts over a four-week period. Information gained from tracking Jones’ movements, as well as through intercepted calls and police executed search warrants for several locations, ultimately yielded a large amount of powder and crack cocaine and $850,000 in cash.

Jones argued that both the installation and resulting surveillance violated his Fourth Amendment rights, and the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held in Jones’ favor.

While the Court has for decades recognized a citizen’s home and other enclaves of privacy as having Fourth Amendment protections, the Court held in the 1983 case United States v. Knotts that a “person traveling in an automobile on public thoroughfares has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements from one place to another.”

The government, relying heavily on the Knotts decision, faced opposition from the Justices. Justice Stephen Breyer noted that should the government prevail in its arguments, there would be nothing to prevent every person from being monitored 24 hours a day, and drew an analogy to the ubiquitous surveillance envisioned in George Orwell’s 1984.

Justice Antonin Scalia, noting that the act of planting the device on the vehicle was unquestionably a trespass, questioned whether a simple trespass by police amounted to a seizure under the Fourth Amendment or an invasion of property. He further noted that surreptitiously placing the device on Jones’ vehicle for weeks may have been unreasonable police conduct, but questioned whether if this conduct should not be under the purview of state legislatures to decide.

The Court is expected to rule on the case later in the term.