{"id":2059,"date":"2013-10-24T13:54:33","date_gmt":"2013-10-24T13:54:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ncjolt.org\/?p=2059"},"modified":"2020-06-04T20:53:59","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T20:53:59","slug":"federal-court-rules-that-gps-tracking-requires-a-warrant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/blogs\/federal-court-rules-that-gps-tracking-requires-a-warrant\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal Court Rules that GPS Tracking Requires a Warrant"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thursday, October 24, 2013, by Kyle Evans
\nOn Tuesday, the Third Circuit issued a ruling<\/a> that requires law enforcement officials to obtain a warrant for GPS tracking. This case, United States v. Katzin, is the most recent to address privacy rights and GPS tracking since the Supreme Court held<\/a> that using long-term GPS surveillance to monitor a suspected criminal constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment. The Supreme Court, however, did not extend their ruling to whether such a search requires a warrant.
\nThe Katzin<\/i> case arises out of a string of burglaries that occurred at various pharmacies in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland in 2009 and 2010. The burglars\u2019 methods were consistent among the robberies, and police narrowed their investigation to Harry Katzin and his two brothers. The police approached the FBI for assistance, and in late 2010 attached a \u201cslap-on\u201d GPS tracker<\/a>, which attaches magnetically to a vehicle\u2019s exterior, without first obtaining a warrant. Police apprehended Katzin and his brothers with merchandise pharmacy after the tracking data revealed that they had left a recently robbed Rite Aid.
\nBefore the District Court, the Brothers Katzin argued that the evidence gained from the tracking data should be inadmissible, as the police had failed to first obtain a warrant to use GPS tracking. The Government advanced several arguments against admissibility, claiming that they didn\u2019t need a warrant to use GPS devices and that the police had acted in good faith when they installed the device. The District Court agreed with the Katzins and suppressed all evidence obtained because of the illegal GPS search. The Government appealed the decision, and the Third Circuit affirmed the lower court decision with this week\u2019s ruling.<\/p>\n

The opinion quoted an older Supreme Court case, hoping that excluding evidence obtained from a warrantless GPS search would \u201cincentivize the police to err on the side of constitutional behavior and help prevent future Fourth Amendment violations.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s currently unclear whether the Government will petition the Supreme Court to review the Third Circuit\u2019s ruling. The Katzin<\/i> ruling relies heavily on the precedent set in Jones<\/i>, so if the Court grant certiorari it seems likely they will uphold the Third Circuit\u2019s decision. Judge Greenaway, writing the decision, noted that the case occurred \u201cat a time when courts were becoming more attuned to the argument that warrantless GPS surveillance violated the Fourth Amendment.\u201d The opinion quoted an older Supreme Court case, hoping that excluding evidence obtained from a warrantless GPS search would \u201cincentivize the police to err on the side of constitutional behavior and help prevent future Fourth Amendment violations.\u201d
\nCivil liberties groups, such as the ALCU<\/a>, are hailing the Third Circuit ruling as a victory. The Katzin<\/i> decision is certainly a step in the right direction for privacy rights, but there\u2019s still a lot of ground to cover. While citizens may be protected from unwarranted physical invasions into privacy, the Fifth Circuit recently held<\/a> that police don\u2019t need a probable cause warrant to access cellphone data. And in June, the Supreme Court held in Maryland v. King<\/i><\/a> that \u201ctaking and analyzing an arrestee\u2019s DNA\u201d is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thursday, October 24, 2013, by Kyle Evans On Tuesday, the Third Circuit issued a ruling that requires law enforcement officials to obtain a warrant for GPS tracking. This case, United States v. Katzin, is the most recent to address privacy rights and GPS tracking since the Supreme Court held that using long-term GPS surveillance to …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[51],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2059"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2059"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2059\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7557,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2059\/revisions\/7557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}