Hidden GPS devices to track suspects raise legal concerns

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Hidden GPS devices to track suspects raise legal concerns

Michael Balsamo, Associated Press
Updated 2:45 am, Thursday, October 1, 2015

MINEOLA, N.Y. (AP) — For months, police trying to solve a Long Island robbery spree had little more to go on than grainy surveillance footage of a man in a hoodie and black ski mask holding up one gas station or convenience store after another. That was until the gunman made off with a stack of bills that investigators had secretly embedded with a GPS tracking device.

Within days, a suspect accused of pulling off nearly a dozen heists — including one in which a clerk was killed — was behind bars, and officers were crediting technology that has become commonplace around the U.S. over the past five years or so.

"Those tools are part of our arsenal," Nassau County Police Chief Steven Skrynecki said after the arrest this summer, adding that GPS is now used "as a matter of course in our investigations."

. . .

In 2012 the U.S. Supreme Court took up the police practice of planting GPS trackers on suspects' vehicles to monitor their movements, and it set certain constitutional boundaries on their use. It stopped short of saying a warrant is always required.

Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/crime/article/Hidden-GPS-devices-to-track-suspects-raise-legal-6541996.php

[Nihil]

1. Can't see why this would be a problem ...

> the gunman made off with a stack of bills that investigators had
> secretly embedded with a GPS tracking device.

This is a completely different thing from planting a GPS device on a suspect's vehicle.

It is no different (except in efficiency) from ensuring that the thief gets
the marked bills to trace him (/her).



(Wonder if they'll also charge him with the theft of the GPS device? )

[skepticscott]

5. I tend to agree

If they had secretly planted GPS devices on a bunch of people and tracked all their movements to see which one corresponded to the next crime, that would be one thing, but this was done in such a way that only someone who was actually guilty was being tracked, and only AFTER they had committed the crime in question.

[ReactFlux]

7. Probably the little detail about warrant

And the SCOTUS overlooking it as well.

[Nihil]

8. You don't need a warrant to put a GPS tracker in your own money ...

There is only one crime being committed (the theft of the money
with the tracker) - and one criminal (the thief).

SCOTUS simply doesn't enter into it.

[geek tragedy]

12. there's no need for a warrant to put a GPS on your own property nt

[msanthrope]

2. What a badly-written article by the AP. The conflation of legal issues is a shame. nt

[madokie]

3. I still find it hard to believe anything AP

Back in the nixionain age if an article was an AP article you could pretty much bet it was a pack of lies.

[msanthrope]

4. Well, at least they were competently-written lies. nt

[leftyladyfrommo]

6. I could see them using this in bank robberies.

The teller'S try to give out bait money. They could track the bank robbers this way.

[Ikonoklast]

9. Non-issue. There is no legal problem here at all.

Banks already do this, using GPS to track stolen cash already adjudicated as legal.

Trucking companies have been doing this for years, GPS tracking hardwired in trailers and hidden in loads catch thieves all the time.

[yellowcanine]

10. No different legally from having LoJack on a vehicle.

Someone takes the vehicle or money with a tracking device they are committing a crime. A warrant is not needed to track someone in the act of committing a crime. In no way is this like police putting a tracking device on a suspect's car.

[geek tragedy]

11. genius way to evade this surveillance: don't steal other people's stuff. nt