Satellite Tracking of Suspects Requires a Warrant, Court Rules

[R. A. Hettinga]

Didn't they do this kind of thing to Jim Bell?

Cheers,
RAH
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<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/12/national/12GPS.html?th=&pagewanted=print&position=>

The New York Times


September 12, 2003 

Satellite Tracking of Suspects Requires a Warrant, Court Rules 
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 


LYMPIA, Wash., Sept. 11 (AP) - The police cannot attach a Global Positioning System tracker to a suspect's vehicle without a warrant, the Washington Supreme Court said today in the first such ruling in the nation. 

The court refused, however,  to overturn the murder conviction of the man who brought the appeal, William B. Jackson, who unknowingly led the police to the shallow grave of his  9-year-old daughter in 1999 after  a G.P.S. device was attached to his vehicle. 

Spokane County deputies had a warrant for the tracking device used in that case, although prosecutors argued they did not  need one. 

"Use of G.P.S. tracking devices is a particularly intrusive method of surveillance," Justice Barbara Madsen wrote in the unanimous decision, "making it possible to acquire an enormous amount of personal  information about the citizen under circumstances where the individual is unaware that every single vehicle trip taken and the duration of every single  stop may be recorded by the government." 

Justice Madsen raised the prospect of citizens' being tracked to "the strip club, the  opera, the baseball game, the `wrong' side of town, the family planning clinic, the labor rally." 

The closely watched case had evoked worries about the police using the  satellite tracking devices to watch citizens' every move. 

Doug Honig, a spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union of  Washington, said the ruling was the first of its kind in the country. 

Attaching a tracking  device to a car is "the equivalent of placing an invisible  police officer in a person's back seat," Mr. Honig said. "Our state Constitution has very strong protections for privacy. Some other states also have very  strong protections for privacy. This will be a strong precedent for them to look at and for any law enforcement agency around the country." 

The Spokane County deputy prosecutor, Kevin Korsmo, pronounced himself satisfied that Mr. Jackson's conviction had been upheld. But he said the court had expanded privacy rights for criminal suspects. Mr. Korsmo  said that in previous cases involving surveillance by more conventional means,  like  binoculars or the naked eye, the Supreme Court  held that there was no right of privacy for what a person did  in public. 

In the Jackson case, the defendant sought to have the warrant thrown out, arguing that it was based on the slimmest of premises: If he was guilty, he might return to the scene of the crime. 

Prosecutors contended that the warrant was proper and that they did not even need a warrant; they contended that the  device was equivalent to tailing Mr. Jackson in an unmarked car. 

The court agreed that the warrant was valid, but rejected the comparison between the device and tailing. 

"The devices in this case were in place for approximately 2.5 weeks," Justice Madsen wrote. "It is unlikely that the sheriff's department could have  successfully maintained uninterrupted 24-hour surveillance throughout this time by following Jackson." 

A call to Mr. Jackson's lawyer was not immediately returned. 

Mr. Jackson reported his daughter missing the day she died. He was arrested nearly a month later after investigators used the G.P.S. system to map his routes to the burial site. He acknowledged burying his daughter but denied killing her. He said he panicked after finding her body in her bed. 

He was convicted of murder and sentenced to 56 years in prison. 


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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
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