The Government Can Use GPS to Track Your Moves

[Guest]

The Government Can Use GPS to Track Your Moves

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.

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 fact, the government violated Pineda-Moreno's privacy rights in two different ways. For starters, the invasion of his driveway was wrong. The courts have long held that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their homes and in the "curtilage," a fancy legal term for the area around the home. The government's intrusion on property just a few feet away was clearly in this zone of privacy.

The judges veered into offensiveness when they explained why Pineda-Moreno's driveway was not private. It was open to strangers, they said, such as delivery people and neighborhood children, who could wander across it uninvited.

Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, who dissented from this month's decision refusing to reconsider the case, pointed out whose homes are not open to strangers: rich people's. The court's ruling, he said, means that people who protect their homes with electric gates, fences and security booths have a large protected zone of privacy around their homes. People who cannot afford such barriers have to put up with the government sneaking around at night.

Judge Kozinski is a leading conservative, appointed by President Ronald Reagan, but in his dissent he came across as a raging liberal. "There's been much talk about diversity on the bench, but there's one kind of diversity that doesn't exist," he wrote. "No truly poor people are appointed as federal judges, or as state judges for that matter." The judges in the majority, he charged, were guilty of "cultural elitism."

The court went on to make a second terrible decision about privacy: that once a GPS device has been planted, the government is free to use it to track people without getting a warrant. There is a major battle under way in the federal and state courts over this issue, and the stakes are high. After all, if government agents can track people with secretly planted GPS devices virtually anytime they want, without having to go to a court for a warrant, we are one step closer to a classic police state — with technology taking on the role of the KGB or the East German Stasi.

Fortunately, other courts are coming to a different conclusion from the Ninth Circuit's — including the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. That court ruled, also this month, that tracking for an extended period of time with GPS is an invasion of privacy that requires a warrant. The issue is likely to end up in the Supreme Court.

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.

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

[Guest]

Yes dgrimm, more and more.

[phkrause]

Don't you just love it.

[Neil D]

Quote:

Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, who dissented from this month's decision refusing to reconsider the case, pointed out whose homes are not open to strangers: rich people's. The court's ruling, he said, means that people who protect their homes with electric gates, fences and security booths have a large protected zone of privacy around their homes. People who cannot afford such barriers have to put up with the government sneaking around at night.

I guess I don't understand......

When Obama wants to allow the rich [rich= those who make $250,000/year or more] to pay more taxes, and allows the middle class more relief from taxes, you get upset....

Now, when a Judge allows only the rich to protection/privacy around thier homes, you get upset....

I guess I don't understand the mindset of the average American middle class individual.....

[Guest]

You could fill a very large book with what you don't understand.

[bonnie]

Quote:

Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, who dissented from this month's decision refusing to reconsider the case, pointed out whose homes are not open to strangers: rich people's. The court's ruling, he said, means that people who protect their homes with electric gates, fences and security booths have a large protected zone of privacy around their homes. People who cannot afford such barriers have to put up with the government sneaking around at night.

Quote:

I guess I don't understand......

Clearly you don't

Quote:

When Obama wants to allow the rich [rich= those who make $250,000/year or more] to pay more taxes, and allows the middle class more relief from taxes, you get upset....

This is completely false.....middle class more relief from taxesObama is not "allowing" more tax relief,their tax liability will stay the same. Except of course the extra dollars they will have to pay for goods and services

At least 50% of "those rich" are small business owners that will be faced with thousands more in taxes every year.Small business is the back bone of this country,they also are pretty savy when it comes to the economics of their business. The least that could be expected in passing all or as much as possible to the consumer which has a lot of middle and lower class. Most small business owners are going to be tightening their belt even more,many will go out of business.That means the government and the frenzied jealousy of others will get a 100% of nothing. Those in the position to close up shop and retire in comfort like my brother will do so.Contrary to what many in government and the jealous among us think businesses are not started to see how many the employer can employ.

Yesterday on our local radio programming business owners were calling in. One I happened to know. When the economic mess started he had 140 employees. He has closed two of his shops and is now down to 20 emoloyee's. The health care bill and the uncertainity with Obama has caused him to cut back.He said on the radio that if Obama hits this "so called rich again" he will close up.He has no intention of working for wages.That is a total of 140 that will paying far less in taxes,will consume only the basic necessities. My brother employed 50 that are now unemployed.

The taxes paid by these two "rich employer's" is peanuts compared to what it was under the Bush tax cuts.

The contributions made by these two employer's to different charities is also peanuts compared to what it was.

The poor and middle class do not provide employment

Quote:

Now, when a Judge allows only the rich to protection/privacy around thier homes, you get upset....

The judge "allowed" no such thing.If you can afford protection go for it,if you can't don't blame the judge,he is not atopping anyone from working hard and having the protection

I guess I don't understand the mindset of the average American middle class individual.....