The United States Supreme Court ruled unanimously on January 23, 2012 that law enforcement authorities need a probable cause warrant from a judge to place a Global Positioning System (GPS) monitoring device on a vehicle to monitor its movement. The decision in the case of United States v. Jones is considered by many analysts as the biggest Fourth Amendment case in the computer age. Specifically the Court rejected the Obama administration’s position that attaching GPS devices to a vehicle was not a search. In what most certainly was a blunder, the government even told the Supreme Court Justices that it could affix GPS devices to the Court members without a search warrant. Justice Scalia writing for the Majority specifically held that attaching GPS devices to a target vehicle constituted a search. However, five of the Justices failed to conclude that this “search” required a search warrant in this particular case however the five Justices did go on to state that prolong GPS surveillance for a month or more as in this case amounted to a search that most certainly would require a warrant. The Minority opinion was silent however on whether GPS monitoring for shorter periods would require a warrant. According to the government, using GPS tracking devices has now become a common crime fighting tool and it is employed thousands of times annually. The Court’s ruling is clearly going to slow down the use of these devices though its failure to examine when an actual warrant is needed will most certainly give rise to additional litigation in this area.
