Didn't they do this kind of thing to Jim Bell?
Cheers,
RAH
---
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/12/national/12GPS.html?th=pagewanted=printposition=
The New York Times
September 12, 2003
Satellite Tracking of Suspects Requires a Warrant, Court Rules
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
LYMPIA, Wash., Sept. 11 (AP) - The police cannot attach a Global Positioning System
tracker to a suspect's vehicle without a warrant, the Washington Supreme Court said
today in the first such ruling in the nation.
The court refused, however, to overturn the murder conviction of the man who brought
the appeal, William B. Jackson, who unknowingly led the police to the shallow grave of
his 9-year-old daughter in 1999 after a G.P.S. device was attached to his vehicle.
Spokane County deputies had a warrant for the tracking device used in that case,
although prosecutors argued they did not need one.
Use of G.P.S. tracking devices is a particularly intrusive method of surveillance,
Justice Barbara Madsen wrote in the unanimous decision, making it possible to acquire
an enormous amount of personal information about the citizen under circumstances
where the individual is unaware that every single vehicle trip taken and the duration
of every single stop may be recorded by the government.
Justice Madsen raised the prospect of citizens' being tracked to the strip club, the
opera, the baseball game, the `wrong' side of town, the family planning clinic, the
labor rally.
The closely watched case had evoked worries about the police using the satellite
tracking devices to watch citizens' every move.
Doug Honig, a spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, said
the ruling was the first of its kind in the country.
Attaching a tracking device to a car is the equivalent of placing an invisible
police officer in a person's back seat, Mr. Honig said. Our state Constitution has
very strong protections for privacy. Some other states also have very strong
protections for privacy. This will be a strong precedent for them to look at and for
any law enforcement agency around the country.
The Spokane County deputy prosecutor, Kevin Korsmo, pronounced himself satisfied that
Mr. Jackson's conviction had been upheld. But he said the court had expanded privacy
rights for criminal suspects. Mr. Korsmo said that in previous cases involving
surveillance by more conventional means, like binoculars or the naked eye, the
Supreme Court held that there was no right of privacy for what a person did in
public.
In the Jackson case, the defendant sought to have the warrant thrown out, arguing that
it was based on the slimmest of premises: If he was guilty, he might return to the
scene of the crime.
Prosecutors contended that the warrant was proper and that they did not even need a
warrant; they contended that the device was equivalent to tailing Mr. Jackson in an
unmarked car.
The court agreed that the warrant was valid, but rejected the comparison between the
device and tailing.
The devices in this case were in place for approximately 2.5 weeks, Justice Madsen
wrote. It is unlikely that the sheriff's department could have successfully
maintained uninterrupted 24-hour surveillance throughout this time by following
Jackson.
A call to Mr. Jackson's lawyer was not immediately returned.
Mr. Jackson reported his daughter missing the day she died. He was arrested nearly a
month later after investigators used the G.P.S. system to map his routes to the burial
site. He acknowledged burying his daughter but denied killing her. He said he panicked
after finding her body in her bed.
He was convicted of murder and sentenced to 56 years in prison.
--
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... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
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