There’s a fascinating, and deeply troubling, report on NPR today about the FAA’s new air traffic control system:
The new system is called the Next Generation Air Transportation System, or NextGen. It will be highly automated. It will rely on GPS instead of radar to locate planes, and it is designed to allow air traffic controllers and pilots to pack more planes,… More
The Supreme Court today issued an opinion holding that police cannot track a suspect using GPS without first getting a warrant.
Justice Scalia wrote the opinion, for a unanimous court, and concluded: “We hold that the Government’s installation of a GPS device on a target’s vehicle, and its use of that device to monitor the vehicle’s movements, constitutes a ‘search.’ It is important to be clear about what occurred in this case: The Government physically occupied private property for the purpose of obtaining information.”… More
Earlier this year, the Wisconsin and New York state courts split on whether police may install a covert GPS tracking device on a suspect’s car without a warrant. On September 17, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court addressed the GPS tracking device issue, ruling that Article 14 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights requires a warrant before such a device may be installed and used.
The defendant,… More
According to the Chicago Tribune, on May 7, 2009, a three-judge panel of Wisconsin Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that police "can attach GPS to cars to secretly track anybody’s movements without obtaining search warrants" without violating the Fourth Amendment. The court’s opinion in State v. Sveum can be found here. The defendant Sveum was under investigation for stalking when the police obtained a warrant to secretly place a GPS device on his car while it was parked in the his driveway. … More