{"id":818,"date":"2012-06-30T21:48:36","date_gmt":"2012-06-30T21:48:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ncjolt.org\/\/?p=818"},"modified":"2020-06-04T20:54:08","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T20:54:08","slug":"fbi-back-to-the-old-fashioned-way-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/blogs\/fbi-back-to-the-old-fashioned-way-2\/","title":{"rendered":"FBI Back to the Old-fashioned Way"},"content":{"rendered":"
Monday, March 26th 2012 by\u00a0Panagiotis A. Papadopoulos<\/strong><\/div>\n
\nLate last year, the Supreme Court heard arguments concerning\u00a0U.S. v. Antoine Jones.\u00a0 To\u00a0summarize<\/a>\u00a0the principal dispute, the defendant objected to the government\u2019s us of a GPS tracking device installed on his car to track his movement for a month.\u00a0\u00a0 The defendant, and a large number of\u00a0concerned<\/a>\u00a0parties<\/a>, believed that the installation of the device amounted to a search without a warrant in violation of theFourth Amendment<\/a>\u2019s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.
\n 
\nThe government\u2019s main\u00a0response<\/a>\u00a0was that the information gleaned from the tracking device could have been learned from law enforcement personnel tracking the suspect on public roads 24 hours a day for the same time period.\u00a0 Essentially, the government maintained that the technology involved simply allowed law enforcement to track the suspect, which would normally be entirely allowable without a warrant, in a\u00a0dramatically easier and more efficient way<\/a>.
\nLast January, in a\u00a0decision<\/a>\u00a0that privacy advocates\u00a0lauded<\/a>\u00a0as a victory over \u201cbig brother,\u201d the Court instructed law enforcement to either do it the\u00a0old-fashioned way<\/a>\u00a0or get a warrant.\u00a0 The Court felt that the installation of the device was a warrantless intrusion into the suspect\u2019s property, despite the fact that the defendant was driving almost exclusively on public roads.\u00a0 Thus the Supreme Court effectively ruled that computers that track suspects are\u00a0much more intrusive<\/a>\u00a0on constitutionally provided privacy interests than humans doing the exact same thing.<\/p>\n

“‘We have a number of people in the United States whom we could not indict, there is not probable cause to indict them or to arrest them who present a threat of terrorism.'”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Anticipating the decision, the\u00a0Federal Bureau of Investigation<\/a>\u00a0scrambled to get warrants for their approximately 3,000 currently operating tracking devices.\u00a0 While they were only partially successful, they still managed to render approximately 92% of their devices \u201clegal\u201d under the new\u00a0Jones\u00a0ruling.
\nHowever, the last remaining 8% still\u00a0worry<\/a>\u00a0the FBI. In FBI\u00a0Director Robert Mueller<\/a>\u00a0words:\u00a0 \u201c\u2019We have a number of people in the United States whom we could not indict, there is not probable cause to indict them or to arrest them who present a threat of terrorism. … [They] may be up on the Internet, may have purchased a gun, but have taken no particular steps to take a terrorist act.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 Taking the Supreme Court\u2019s advice, instead of warrantless searches, the FBI has resorted to tracking the persons of interest with conventional teams of\u00a0six or eight<\/a>.\u00a0 The teams obviously further taxes federal law enforcement\u2019s already strained budget and manpower.
\nFurther questions remain.\u00a0 Namely, prosecutors and agents in the field are left with questions on how to bridge the \u201cprobable cause\u201d gap to obtain a warrant.\u00a0 In the past, tracking suspects with GPS devices was usually one of the main ways of obtaining a warrant.\u00a0 Also, in a concurring opinion,\u00a0Justice Scalia<\/a>wrote that a month of warrantless tracking is unconstitutional, but a couple days might be fine.\u00a0 This has created a legal grey area in which law enforcement officers are left to wonder how many days of warrantless tracking is palatable to the courts.\u00a0 Until such a ruling is made, federal agents are simply being advised to do it the old-fashioned way.\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Monday, March 26th 2012 by\u00a0Panagiotis A. Papadopoulos Late last year, the Supreme Court heard arguments concerning\u00a0U.S. v. Antoine Jones.\u00a0 To\u00a0summarize\u00a0the principal dispute, the defendant objected to the government\u2019s us of a GPS tracking device installed on his car to track his movement for a month.\u00a0\u00a0 The defendant, and a large number of\u00a0concerned\u00a0parties, believed that the …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[51],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818"}],"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=818"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7709,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818\/revisions\/7709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}