The police can attach a GPS to your car without a warrant

Posted by Clyde Middleton on May 10 2009 Filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

It seems that the police, at least in Wisconsin, can attach a GPS tracking device to a car for any reason or no reason at all. No warrant or any level of suspicion is required. The case does not appear to be erroneously decided, and should withstand further review. It’s time for the captains of industry to develop a reasonably priced product that can disable such devices attached to cars.

During or around March, 2003, the Madison, Wisconsin, police department suspected that Michael Sveum was a stalker. They wanted to passively gather information on his public movements, so they obtained a search warrant to attach a GPS to his car. After a few weeks, they retrieved the device, downloaded the information, and continued building their case. He was eventually arrested and found guilty at trial.

Sveum, interestingly, is no stranger to either stalking convictions or appeals. He lost an appeal attacking the sufficiency of the evidence on a 1996 case convicting him of stalking his ex-girlfriend. He was incarcerated until 2002, and during his stint at the State Hotel, he again initiated stalking – this time using his sister to help. This new case was filed mere months after his release. The victim? Same ex-girlfriend. Loser.

In the appeal to the 2003 case, Sveum claimed that the GPS violated his right against unreasonable search and seizure. The full decision is here.

Here’s the appeal issues in a nutshell:

He [Sveum] argues that the warrant authorizing police to place the GPS device on his car was overly broad. The State responds that the warrant was unnecessary because no Fourth Amendment search or seizure occurred. In reply, Sveum implicitly concedes that placing the GPS device on his car and using it to monitor public travel does not implicate the Fourth Amendment. He contends, however, that because the GPS device permitted the police to monitor the location of his car while it was in his garage and in his employer’s garage, places out of public view, all of the information obtained from the GPS device should have been suppressed.

A long-recognized principle that applies in this case is that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in things done in public. If there is no reasonable expectation of privacy, then there is no need for a search warrant which, implicitly, is government authorization to temporarily invade a person’s privacy.

What about attaching a physical device to a car? The Court cited Garcia:

[I]f police follow a car around, or observe its route by means of cameras mounted on lampposts or of satellite imaging as in Google Earth, there is no search. Well, but the tracking in this case was by satellite. Instead of transmitting images, the satellite transmitted geophysical coordinates. The only difference is that in the imaging case nothing touches the vehicle, while in the case at hand the tracking device does. But it is a distinction without any practical difference.

I felt a cold breeze when the Court mentioned Google Earth. Did you?

For the clincher, the Court addresses obtaining information through the GPS when the car was not in a public place:

First, although the police presumably obtained location information while Sveum’s car was inside areas not open to surveillance, there is no indication that this same information could not have been obtained by visual surveillance from outside these enclosures. Such surveillance could have told the police when Sveum’s car entered or exited his garage and the garage at his workplace and, therefore, informed them when his car remained in those places. Sveum does not argue that the police used the GPS device to track his car’s movements within the enclosures.

Second, even if the police had obtained some information about the movement of Sveum’s car within the enclosures and this information should have been suppressed, Sveum suggests no reason why all of the tracking information should be suppressed.

The Court’s conclusion:

Accordingly, we conclude that no Fourth Amendment search or seizure occurs when police attach a GPS device to the outside of a vehicle while it is in a place accessible to the public and then use that device to track the vehicle while it is in public view. Because this case does not involve tracking information on the movement of Sveum’s car within a place protected by the Fourth Amendment, it follows that the circuit court correctly rejected Sveum’s Fourth Amendment suppression argument.

They shoot. They score.

But the case does not end there. It’s time for compelling dictum:

We are more than a little troubled by the conclusion that no Fourth Amendment search or seizure occurs when police use a GPS or similar device as they have here. So far as we can tell, existing law does not limit the government’s use of tracking devices to investigations of legitimate criminal suspects. If there is no Fourth Amendment search or seizure, police are seemingly free to secretly track anyone’s public movements with a GPS device.
…
We are also concerned about the private use of GPS surveillance devices. … Although there are obviously legitimate private uses, such as a trucking company monitoring the location of its trucks, there are also many private uses that most reasonable people would agree should be prohibited.

So there we have it. The Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure does not extend to this fact pattern. Please note, however, that since the device in question was passive – it gathered information only, but did not contemporaneously transmit that information, instead, the device had to be retrieved – there was no implication of the electronic communications acts that are in every state. That’s a complication side-stepped by the facts of this case.

What can we do to defeat this obnoxious interference with our liberty? OK, question assumes a fact seemingly not in evidence – the case supports the argument that our liberty is not being interfered with. While that may be legally accurate, I suggest that it is not ethically accurate. Let me make my case.

The Court tells us that actions in public are not protected. Accordingly, anything we do and anywhere we go “in public” can be observed – by other members of the public or the government. Agreed. The Court also said that therefore no suspicion is required to gather this information. Agreed, again. Let’s apply it.

In this time of highly charged politics, it’s time to track the ministers that condemn same-sex marriage. So Code Pink attaches a passive GPS to every vehicle driven by these ministers.

Next example. The police are curious about a family that just moved into their small town. They passive GPS devices to every car.

Next example. You go on a vacation 400 miles from home. You visit a friend at one location, a relative at another, and finally stay at a cabin in the mountains. When you return, the mayor of your fine little city recounts your trip to you and asks how the weather was in the mountains.

Do I need to go on? Every example is legitimate under current law. Legal? Yes. Ethical? No.

So how can we defeat this obnoxious interference with our liberty? Let’s learn how a GPS works. Here’s a quick overview of the satellite system, but I want to know about the device itself.

This company is filling a nice niche in this market. It seems you can block about anything for $70 to $200. This particular product sends out a frequency that “blocks all known tracking devices.” That suggests to me that the frequency is creating noise that mingles with the satellite frequency, thus rendering the latter useless for data purposes. Nice.

Even Amazon has a bunch for sale.

A little more reading (sorry, several articles and message boards) has taught me (I think!) that GPS satellites send radio frequencies, and to jam locally these frequencies all that is required is to duplicate it. The two sets of data collide and cancel each other out. It is, apparently, the theory upon which blocking a cell phone works. Here’s how to jam a cell phone.

So at what frequencies do GPS satellites transmit? (Disclaimer – I am WAY out of my league here!) This information seems on point (note that it is from 1994 – so it can at least (and perhaps at most) help us to understand the variables involved):

GPS Satellite Signals
• The SVs transmit two microwave carrier signals. The L1 frequency (1575.42 MHz) carries the navigation message and the SPS code signals. The L2 frequency (1227.60 MHz) is used to measure the ionospheric delay by PPS equipped receivers.
• Three binary codes shift the L1 and/or L2 carrier phase.
o The C/A Code (Coarse Acquisition) modulates the L1 carrier phase. The C/A code is a repeating 1 MHz Pseudo Random Noise (PRN) Code. This noise-like code modulates the L1 carrier signal, “spreading” the spectrum over a 1 MHz bandwidth. The C/A code repeats every 1023 bits (one millisecond). There is a different C/A code PRN for each SV. GPS satellites are often identified by their PRN number, the unique identifier for each pseudo-random-noise code. The C/A code that modulates the L1 carrier is the basis for the civil SPS.
o The P-Code (Precise) modulates both the L1 and L2 carrier phases. The P-Code is a very long (seven days) 10 MHz PRN code. In the Anti-Spoofing (AS) mode of operation, the P-Code is encrypted into the Y-Code. The encrypted Y-Code requires a classified AS Module for each receiver channel and is for use only by authorized users with cryptographic keys. The P (Y)-Code is the basis for the PPS.
o The Navigation Message also modulates the L1-C/A code signal. The Navigation Message is a 50 Hz signal consisting of data bits that describe the GPS satellite orbits, clock corrections, and other system parameters.

Want a picture?

I have zero ability to interpret that picture. None whatsoever. Just looking at it makes me want to act out. Good luck. Let me know how it works out for you.

So can we block passive GPS devices that are secretly attached to our vehicles? Yes. Here are your options:

• 1. Buy a blocking device through the links above;
• 2. Build a blocking device using the information above as a foundation; or
• 3. Contact your legislators and tell them to get legislating this interference with our liberties into history.

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