The ruling upholds a broad right to be free from unreasonable searches. But it also highlights a struggle within the Supreme Court to balance law enforcement objectives with privacy concerns.
Law enforcement officials must obtain a court-authorized warrant before using a GPS device to track the movements of a criminal suspect?s vehicle, the US Supreme Court ruled on Monday, eliciting praise from privacy advocates.
Skip to next paragraphIn a unanimous decision, the high court said Fourth Amendment guarantees against unreasonable searches prohibit police or federal agents from affixing a Global-Positioning-System (GPS) tracking device to a private vehicle and then recording the vehicle?s every movement 24 hours a day for weeks or months without prior court approval.
The decision is a setback for the Obama Justice Department, which had argued that the Constitution did not hinder its use of tracking technology to monitor vehicles traveling on public streets.
The opinion in US v. Jones (10-1259) is important because it upholds a broad right to be free from unreasonable searches. But it also highlights an emerging struggle within the high court to establish a consistent method of analysis that properly balances law enforcement objectives with privacy concerns.
As the government deploys an increasingly sophisticated and intrusive repertoire of surveillance technologies, privacy advocates warn that zones of privacy are fast shrinking in America.
?We have entered a new and frightening age when advancing technology is erasing the Fourth Amendment,? said John Whitehead, president of the Virginia-based non-profit Rutherford Institute, in a statement.
?Thankfully,? he said, ?the US Supreme Court has sent a resounding message to government officials ? especially law enforcement officials ? that there are limits to their powers.?
Although all nine justices agreed that the government?s use of a GPS tracking device amounted to a search, the justices split 5 to 4 on how to properly analyze the issue.
Writing for the court, Justice Antonin Scalia tied the question to Fourth Amendment protections of the sanctity of private property against government trespass. He said the government needed a warrant not just to attach the GPS device to a piece of private property, but to attach the device with the intent of obtaining information.
?We have no doubt that such a physical intrusion would have been considered a ?search? within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment when it was adopted,? Justice Scalia wrote in an opinion joined in full by four other justices.
Joining Scalia?s decision were Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, and Sonia Sotomayor.
Justice Samuel Alito agreed with the general outcome of the case, but wrote separately to suggest the court should have based its decision on an examination of whether the owner of the monitored vehicle had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the long-term movements of his car.
Scalia?s property-based approach is ?unwise,? Justice Alito wrote. ?It strains the language of the Fourth Amendment; it has little if any support in current Fourth Amendment case law; and it is highly artificial.?
He questioned how it would apply in cases in which the government tied its surveillance to factory-installed GPS devices in vehicles or to smart phones equipped with GPS.
Three justices joined Alito?s concurrence. They were Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and Elena Kagan.
In past decisions in recent years, the court has examined whether a subject had a ?reasonable expectation of privacy? at the time of the particular government intrusion. Scalia?s private-property approach had fallen out of favor through disuse by the court, but according to Scalia, had never been overruled.
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