What do you think about government GPS monitoring?

Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn’t violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway — and no reasonable expectation that the government isn’t tracking your movements.
That is the bizarre — and scary — rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants — with no need for a search warrant.
(See a TIME photoessay on Cannabis Culture.)
It is a dangerous decision — one that, as the dissenting judges warned, could turn America into the sort of totalitarian state imagined by George Orwell. It is particularly offensive because the judges added insult to injury with some shocking class bias: the little personal privacy that still exists, the court suggested, should belong mainly to the rich.

This case began in 2007, when Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents decided to monitor Juan Pineda-Moreno, an Oregon resident who they suspected was growing marijuana. They snuck onto his property in the middle of the night and found his Jeep in his driveway, a few feet from his trailer home. Then they attached a GPS tracking device to the vehicle’s underside.
After Pineda-Moreno challenged the DEA’s actions, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled in January that it was all perfectly legal. More disturbingly, a larger group of judges on the circuit, who were subsequently asked to reconsider the ruling, decided this month to let it stand. (Pineda-Moreno has pleaded guilty conditionally to conspiracy to manufacture marijuana and manufacturing marijuana while appealing the denial of his motion to suppress evidence obtained with the help of GPS.)

In these highly partisan times, GPS monitoring is a subject that has both conservatives and liberals worried. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s pro-privacy ruling was unanimous — decided by judges appointed by Presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
(Comment on this story.)
Plenty of liberals have objected to this kind of spying, but it is the conservative Chief Judge Kozinski who has done so most passionately. "1984 may have come a bit later than predicted, but it’s here at last," he lamented in his dissent. And invoking Orwell’s totalitarian dystopia where privacy is essentially nonexistent, he warned: "Some day, soon, we may wake up and find we’re living in Oceania."

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2013150,00.html?xid=rss-fullnation-yahoo

What do you think about this?


Related Blogs

9 Comments

9 Responses to “What do you think about government GPS monitoring?”

  1. vindikat Says:
    Comment #840

    Jokes on them, my car has a bad transmission and hasn’t been drivable in two years

  2. Greyhound Says:
    Comment #841

    At least it wasn’t GPS, satellite, and wireless video broadcasting.

  3. Livy Says:
    Comment #842

    I didn’t read the whole thing, but I think putting a tracking device on a persons car is a major violation of privacy. It’s slightly creepy too. :(

  4. Proud Texan Says:
    Comment #843

    I’m going to let you in on a little secret, your cell phone has a tracking device in it. The government has satellites in space that can read the brand of cigarettes you smoke and the government has listening devices that can hear your conversations through your walls in your house. There is no expectation of privacy in this world anymore. However if you are not involved in criminal activity the government gets pretty bored pretty fast watching you take your kids to soccer practice.

  5. John Nava Says:
    Comment #844

    Violation of the 4th amendment "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized"

  6. Oh right now cough Says:
    Comment #845

    Same answer as before, they need a warrant, and second remember the Patriot Act

  7. chris tanzu Says:
    Comment #846

    so their oh 20 million are so gps in usa.which one would they follow. and why would gov CAre about my geochasin g

  8. Sky Says:
    Comment #847

    I’d be worried–if I had a car for the government to "bug".

    But since I don’t…?

  9. sw Says:
    Comment #848

    Actually, I spend most of my time in the crapper and I was wondering if they could maybe get some cameras and microphones, ’cause seriously, I could use the company.

Leave a Reply

Tags

Amber Alert GPS amber alert system amp auto Backtrack Bushnell car cell cell phone Child child gps child locator child locator gps child tracking device Compass device devices fleet Globalsat google gps gps child gps child locator gps locator gps personal tracking GPS Tracker gps tracking gps tracking device Hiking Location locator personal phone real Real-Time Satellite spy System Teen the amber alert time tracker tracking Unit usglobalsat

Resources

GPS Tracking

Related Tracking Links

Copyright 2012 Personal GPS Tracking

About Us | Privacy Policy | Terms Of Use