{"id":16336,"date":"2012-01-20T18:18:14","date_gmt":"2012-01-20T23:18:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=16336"},"modified":"2012-01-21T16:08:39","modified_gmt":"2012-01-21T21:08:39","slug":"how-should-the-supreme-court-handle-warrantless-gps-tracking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2012\/01\/how-should-the-supreme-court-handle-warrantless-gps-tracking\/","title":{"rendered":"How Should the Supreme Court Handle Warrantless GPS Tracking?"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the most anticipated decisions of the current U.S. Supreme Court term is United States v. Jones, <\/em>which was argued last fall (transcript here<\/a>).\u00a0 The case concerns Fourth Amendment protections from GPS tracking of automobiles.\u00a0\u00a0 The lower court,\u00a0the D.C. Circuit, held that the government was prohibited from placing a GPS tracking device on the defendant\u2019s car without a warrant and tracking his movements 24 hours a day for\u00a0four weeks.\u00a0 For the D.C. Circuit, it was crucial that the tracking was so extensive, which creates the possibility of a very fact-bound affirmance.\u00a0 Alternatively, the\u00a0Court might try to draw some type of bright-line rule that would be of greater assistance to lower courts in deciding future cases, either favorably to GPS tracking or otherwise.<\/p>\n

As the Court continues to sort out these issues, the Justices might\u00a0benefit from reading a\u00a0new\u00a0note in the Marquette Law Review <\/em>by Justin Webb<\/a>.\u00a0 Justin’s paper, entitled “Car-ving Out Notions of Privacy: The Impact of GPS Tracking and Why Maynard<\/em> is a Move in the Right Direction,”\u00a0argues in favor of the D.C. Circuit’s approach.\u00a0 The abstract appears after the jump.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In a controversial decision in 2010, the D.C. Circuit held that warrantless GPS tracking of an automobile for an extended period of time violates the Fourth Amendment. The D.C. Circuit approached the issue in a novel way, using \u201cmosaic theory\u201d to assert that aggregation of information about an individual\u2019s movements, over an extended period of time, violated an individual\u2019s reasonable expectation of privacy. Because the D.C. Circuit\u2019s decision gave rise to a circuit split, the Supreme Court granted certiorari to resolve the conflict, and will thus decide one of the most important Fourth Amendment cases since 1983. This Note discusses how state and federal courts have dealt with warrantless GPS tracking, and ultimately asserts that the Maynard<\/em> court\u2019s decision was correct, insofar as it takes account of the interaction of changing technology and shifting societal notions of privacy. The Note urges the Supreme Court to incorporate an approach similar to Maynard<\/em> within its Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. The Note concludes that failure to do so will contract already-cramped notions of privacy in the digital age, and facilitate a normative shift in conceptions of privacy that may be detrimental and irreversible.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the most anticipated decisions of the current U.S. Supreme Court term is United States v. Jones, which was argued last fall (transcript here).\u00a0 The case concerns Fourth Amendment protections from GPS tracking of automobiles.\u00a0\u00a0 The lower court,\u00a0the D.C. Circuit, held that the government was prohibited from placing a GPS tracking device on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,35,122,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-criminal-justice","category-legal-scholarship","category-public","category-us-supreme-court","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16336\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}