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Tag: GPS tracking

Monday Night Open Thread

I've been out all day and am just getting to the day's news. Did anyone watch Bristol Palin on DWTS? How did she do?

The Justice Department has asked the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals for en banc review of its decision holding a warrant is required for GPS surveillance. In August, a 3 judge panel reversed a conviction and life sentence in a drug case because the defendant was tracked through a GPS device installed on his car without a warrant. The earlier opinion is here.

Paris Hilton was placed on a year's unsupervised probation on two misdemeanors today. The judge gave her a strong warning: [More...]

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Federal Appeals Court Tosses Drug Conviction, Says GPS Tracking Requires Warrant

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals today became the first appeals court to rule that police need a warrant to install a GPS tracking device on a vehicle. In doing so, it reversed a conviction and life sentence of an alleged major trafficker.

In striking down the drug conviction of Antoine Jones, former co-owner of a District nightclub called Levels, the D.C. court said the FBI and District police overstepped their authority by tracking his movements round-the-clock for four weeks, placing a GPS monitoring device on his Jeep after an initial warrant had expired.

...Here the police used the GPS device not to track Jones‘s ―movements from one place to another,‖ Knotts, 460 U.S. at 281, but rather to track Jones‘s movements 24 hours a day for 28 days as he moved among scores of places, thereby discovering the totality and pattern of his movements from place to place to place.

Contrary positions have been taken by federal appeals courts in other districts, making Supreme Court review a real possibility, if it's not reversed en banc. The decision is here. [More...]

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