Civil rights groups urge Supreme Court to rule against GPS tracking

In advance of the Supreme Court hearing on the use of GPS tracking by law enforcement agencies, several civil liberties groups are urgingthe court to rule in favor of privacy rights.

In the United States v. Jones, the Supreme Court is set to rule on whether the use of warrant-less GPS tracking by law enforcement officials is a violation of the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable search and seizure.

Several groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Electronic Privacy Center, and the Gun Owners of America have all filed amicus curiae briefs in support of Jones in the case.

Using an expired warrant that only applied to the District of Columbia, law enforcement officials placed a GPS tracker on Antoine Jones’s car while it was parked in a public lot in Maryland. Using the information obtained from the GPS device, police were able to convict Jones of being involved in a cocaine-distribution operation. Civil liberties groups argue that the placement of the GPS device on Jones’s car violated his fourth amendment rights and ruling in favor of the government in this case could result in broad government overreach and threaten other constitutional protections.

Arthur Spitzer, legal director of the ACLU in Washington, D.C., said the Supreme Court should uphold the Fourth Amendment and protect private lives against the invasion of government probing.

“The court should apply those values so that as technology becomes more and more powerful, those values can be preserved, not erased,” Spitzer said. “If the Fourth Amendment is to have any continuing meaning, we think the court needs to recognize that just because technology makes something possible, it doesn’t mean it should be allowed.”

Spitzer added that the case will have “strong implications” on whether or not the government needs a warrant to track people using their cell phones.

In contrast, law enforcement officials argue that GPS tracking is nothing new and that it is simply an easier way to conduct existing practices like tailing and surveillance, which have already been approved by the law.

The case is scheduled for argument in early November.