By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com
WASHINGTON — The issue of law enforcement using warrantless GPS is still simmering.
The latest: The Justice Department on Monday asked the full U.S. Court of Appeals in D.C. to overturn a ruling by a three-judge panel, which said law enforcement must get a warrant when using a GPS to track a suspect, the BLT:The Blog of the Legal Times reports.
The three-judge panel ruled that authorities violated the privacy of Antoine Jones, the co-owner of a nightclub in Washington, by using the GPS to link him to a suspected Maryland drug house, the blog reported. The court vacated his conviction and life sentence.
Federal prosecutors have cited a 1983 Supreme Court ruling that said a person traveling on a public road should have no expectation of privacy, the blog wrote.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Smith wrote in the petition for a rehearing that the ruling”raises enormous practical problems for law enforcement,” the blog reported.
“The decision leaves unresolved precisely when the monitoring of a GPS device becomes a ‘search’ under the Fourth Amendment, and implicitly calls into question common and important practices such as sustained visual surveillance and photographic surveillance of public places,” Smith wrote, according to the blog.
OTHER STORIES OF INTEREST
- Temp Detroit Police Chief Made Permanent (AP)
- FBI Says it Supplied Fake Bomb in Chicago Plot (AP)
- Border Governors Call for Immigration Reform (AP)
- Feds to Auction Off Bill Clinton’s Sax That Was Swindler’s (Smoking Gun)
- DC U.S. Attorney to Focus on Cold Cases (Main Justice)
- How Serious is the Alleged London Pope Plot? (Newsweek)
- FBI Sting Nabs Rogue Nuclear Scientist (Newsweek)
