Supreme Court Decision Limits Police GPS Tracking

Supreme Court Decision Limits Police GPS Tracking

"The US Supreme Court has ruled that law enforcement agents may not use GPS tracking devices to gather evidence on suspects under investigation, although the ruling still leaves many questions for criminal justice professionals.

The ruling is a response to a challenge filed in a lower-court case involving the tracking of Antoine Jones, a man previously convicted of drug trafficking. That conviction was overturned with the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling; however, the three-way split among justices in their reasoning leaves much to be considered in the application of the new precedent.

Some legal analysts and those who support more sweeping surveillance techniques argue the ruling is an announcement to the law enforcement community that electronic tracking of any kind without a warrant will be challenged and that the ruling severely limits the capability of police officers and federal agents to fight crime.

Privacy advocates and other legal scholars, however, argue the ruling is too narrow and may only be construed to apply to the act of trespassing when attaching a GPS device to a vehicle for tracking purposes. Justice Sonia Sotomayor echoed these concerns in her portion of the opinion, noting that the ruling may not specifically apply to other instances of tracking that do not involve a physical invasion of privacy."