<p><img src="images/stories/fpp_logo.jpg" border="0" /></p>
<p>In January, the U. S. Supreme Court ruled that the federal government attaching a GPS device to a citizen’s vehicle, without a warrant, to monitor the vehicle’s movements constitutes a search which violates the Fourth Amendment.  Now the Obama administration is <a href="http://jurist.org/paperchase/2012/06/doj-defends-warrantless-gps-tracking.php" target="_blank">informing</a> the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that they are going to do it anyway because they have the right and the power to do so.</p>
<p>According to the Obama administration the Supreme Court’s ruling did not specifically mandate obtaining a search warrant in all situations.  According to them that leaves a loophole in the ruling that they can use to mount a tracking device.</p>
<p>The Wall Street Journal <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303552104577438570632493222.html?mod=googlenews_wsj" target="_blank">reports</a>,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The government maintains “that a warrant is not needed for a GPS search, as the Court…did not resolve that question,” a Justice Department spokeswoman said. Nevertheless, she said, the department has “advised agents and prosecutors going forward to take the most prudent steps and obtain a warrant for new or ongoing investigations” in most cases.</p>
<p>The government’s awkward position—saying search warrants are not needed but advising agents to seek warrants anyway—highlights the unanswered questions about digital tracking techniques that remain in the wake of the court’s privacy decision in U.S. v. Jones in January.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The government is claiming that a tracking device is not a search, yet wants its agents to get search warrants.  WSJ continues,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Because of the way the government framed the argument in the lower courts—that GPS tracking wasn’t a search at all—the justices did not consider another Justice Department argument. In that argument, the government said that such tracking is a reasonable search that does not require a warrant, because police could accomplish the same goal through another method that requires no warrant—physically following a suspect’s vehicle around the clock.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Judge Andrew Napolitano, no doubt, would see this as a violation of the Fourth Amendment.  According to Napolitano, the Founders “used the term <em>security</em>, which meant to them essentially the same thing as our contemporary understanding of privacy.</p>
<p><a href="http://frontporchpolitics.com/2012/06/obama-administration-defies-supreme-courts-ruling-on-gps-tracking/">Continue on Front Porch Politics &gt;&gt;&gt;</a></p>