
FBI Turns Off Thousands of GPS Devices After Supreme Court Ruling - ahmadss
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2012/02/25/fbi-turns-off-thousands-of-gps-devices-after-supreme-court-ruling/
======
alister
>prompted the FBI to turn off about 3,000 GPS tracking devices that were in
use

When I read the figure of 3000, I ricocheted between being shocked at the
large number of people being tracked, then realized that it's actually tiny
compared to the US population of 313M, and then back to be being dismayed that
it's not so small after doing some back-of-the-envelope calculations.

Here's my thinking:

The US has 254M registered vehicles (Wikipedia), but cars are shared within
families and the average family size is 2.6 (US census). If we further assume
that a subject is tracked for about a month, the tracking device gets used on
~10 vehicles per year. Hence, 254000000/3000/2.6/10 = 3256.

So your chances of regularly riding in a "bugged" vehicle during the year are
1 in 3256. I have more than 3256 accumulated contacts in my email -- probably
you do too.

Conclusion: It's very likely that you _know someone_ who's vehicle is being
tracked by the FBI _this year_.

~~~
cperciva
_It's very likely that you know someone who's vehicle is being tracked by the
FBI this year._

You're assuming that the rate is evenly distributed. I think it's very likely
that it isn't; if you're involved in espionage or organized crime, you
probably know _several_ people who were being tracked by the FBI.

Based on your "more than 3256" people you know by name and the (bogus)
equidistribution hypothesis, you should also know 1 or 2 victims of violent
crime and about 10 victims of property crime each year, and at some point in
your life you should know a homicide victim.

~~~
mahmud
NY police is snooping on people "just" for being Muslim[1] (I put Muslim in
quotes just in case you think that in and of itself supicious)

So, you don't need to associate with the hypothetical drug barrons & foreign
agents: you just need to know a Muslim.

[1] [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/24/police-spying-
new-y...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/24/police-spying-new-york-
muslim_n_1300379.html)

~~~
maratd
> NY police is snooping on people "just" for being Muslim

And what would be your best guess as to why they did that?

~~~
mahmud
"New York City cops, they're not too smart" -- The Strokes

~~~
maratd
Apparently smart enough to see the correlation between a person's religion and
terrorism in New York City. Pretending it's not there wouldn't be too smart.

------
pak
I'm interested in how

> a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy in the totality of their
> movements, even if those movements are in public.

translates to actions on the public internet. This has potentially huge
ramifications if it were to apply to the web, where the "totality of one's
movements" can be much easier to track and perhaps even more revealing than
where my car goes.

Can the FBI, by this standard, potentially need a search warrant to:

1\. attempt to create a complete profile of my semi-public internet content
(surreptitiously friend me on Facebook, follow my Twitter feed, and monitor
all other sites where I am active for recent posts)

2\. look at the browsing history of a public terminal I regularly use at a
library

3\. capture packets I'm sending over unencrypted WiFi in my home

None of these things are very much private nor does any involve any trespass
by an investigator--perhaps 3 carries the greatest expectation of privacy by
the average technically uninclined citizen. A lawyer could argue, however,
that in capturing one or more of them, the FBI approaches capturing nearly all
of what somebody does on the internet.

I think the Supreme Court has done a very interesting (and perhaps
unprecedented?) thing here in creating an expectation of privacy in a _public_
environment by invoking the work _totality._ With cameras getting smaller, and
networks wider, and databases larger, it only seemed inevitable that within a
few decades, all of our public movements within urban centres could and likely
would be recorded. Similarly, people are already to starting to consider the
internet to be "forever," since content never seems to be really "deletable,"
and Google/Facebook increasingly lower the effort needed to profile somebody's
web content. Tell me that in a few decades, our movements on the internet will
not be as important as our movements in the physical world, if that isn't
already the case.

I hope this decision is the seed of a legal philosophy that could impede the
continued erosion of privacy-in-public by everyone's smaller chips and bigger
hard drives. In my mind, the freedom for people to interact in public without
fear of lifelong ramifications is vital to democracy and societal progress
although less and less people seem to agree with me. So, maybe this is my
desperate optimism talking.

~~~
kirillzubovsky
I think the point SC is trying to make is that while you're in public, FBI is
free to follow you around all day long, thus tracking you in a way that you
made publicly available.

However, bugging your car isn't something that you made explicitly available
and therefore is violating your reasonable expectations of privacy.

That said, this indeed makes it very interesting in online play. It's obvious
that FBI shouldn't just hack into your computer and watch your every move.
But, if they just happened to observe your unencrypted data bits and make
sense out of them, that might still be legal. After all, that's just like
watching where your car goes to every day.

~~~
karlshea
Actually, the opinion says that this case doesn't have anything to do with
"reasonable expectations of privacy" like the government contended originally.
The court says that this was actually trespass.

It's an interesting distinction, they made the decision not on Katz's
"expectations of privacy" test, but instead on common-law trespass which the
Fourth Amendment was based on. So this decision clarifies that the
"expectations of privacy" test _added to_ the Fourth Amendment's common-law
origin, it didn't replace it.

(page 4 of the opinion, page 6 of the pdf):
<http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/10-1259.pdf>

------
beedogs
> For instance, he said, agency is now “wrestling” with the legality of
> whether agents can lift up the lid of a trash can without committing
> trespass.

Um, I thought it was pretty well-established that you _cannot_ do this? Is the
FBI just stupid?

~~~
dedward
If the trash is at the curb and not on your property, they can. So.. if they
can do that, how is that differnet than your car parked in the street? Both
are in a public area.

(note I'm only addressing the reason for asking the question. Evidence
gathered from trash is useful too, and for evidence not on your private
property, currently I believe no warrant is required (why should it be? It's
no longer your private stuff, it's garbage headed for a public landfill.)

Vehicles are a bit different - but if the vehicle were parked in the street,
and not in a private driveway, no trespass is required to plant a tracking
device.

If this is now considered some kind of trespass, then the feds DO need ot re-
evaluate the potential fallout from garbage-related evidence.

~~~
mayanksinghal
Well on the other hand, one could also argue that when you put the trash on
curb you give away any rights to it - which means that the trash becomes a
public property that Feds have access to.

Vehicles on the other hand, even when they are on public property still belong
to the owner and hence although no trespassing is required in planting the
device (inside or outside the vehicle), the Feds would still be meddling with
private property.

~~~
karlshea
If you read the actual opinion (which I recommend, it's very interesting),
placing the tracking device on the vehicle's undercarriage _is_ actually
trespass:

"It is important to be clear about what occurred in this case: The Government
physically occupied private property for the purpose of obtaining information.
We have no doubt that such a physical intrusion would have been considered a
“search” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment when it was adopted."
(page 4 of the opinion, 6 of the pdf)

<http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/10-1259.pdf>

------
orbitingpluto
That's just so much effort to plant those things. Isn't that what Facebook and
specially crafted SMS messages are for?

Now they can save money and go up another order of magnitude in the amount
they track!

Would you be particularly concerned with wasting your time with low-tech
lojacking when so many other avenues of surveillance are around the corner?
Isn't it better to direct your efforts to be ahead of the curve?

------
jc123
Sounds reasonable and looks like 8-0 ruling

<http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/10-1259.pdf>

I wonder what the ruling would be for a case of a search of a trash can that
is on the public street: seems it should be allowed without warrant.

~~~
dedward
Unless we look at the privacy implications. Just because I Dont' want the
paper anymore doesn't mean I'm putting it in the public domain..... or does
it. If people find my junk useful, they can take it. but if there was some
paperwork in there that I probably should have burnt or cross-cut-shred,
should privacy laws not provide some kind of protection here? What if I
realize the mistake before the truck comes but the feds have already taken my
documents? It could be murky, and should be defined.

And for the record, I want law enforcement to be able to effectively do their
jobs, and for technology to help them, but something that used to be hard and
expensive that is now cheap and easy ( gps trackers instead of following
people manually) should never be an excuse to abandon the fundamental
principles put in place to prevent the abuse of power.

~~~
amirmc
_"... something that used to be hard and expensive that is now cheap and easy
..._ "

That seems to sum up all the problems I'm seeing now. It's become so
easy/cheap to track people, that the _cost_ of doing so doesn't have to figure
as prominently in the decision.

------
joering2
police/fbi was caught lying many times before. I dont think stop using GPSes
is an option for them. Any idea from a layer standpoint what would happen if
they still track a car with GPS and this is proven? can someone be liable or
is it just going to be a slap on the wrist, some one-page document saying
"kindly please stop because you were told to by supreme court" ? what kind of
law works against FBI?

~~~
SoftwareMaven
The evidence gathered from the GPS and any evidence gathered as a result of
that evidence would be thrown out of court. It becomes fruit of the poisoned
tree[1]. I think most police agencies would be very careful to not risk having
all evidence gathered while the accused car is nearby thrown out.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree>

~~~
Drbble
It is more likely that the police would press their luck against a suspect who
does not know his rights and cannot afford lawyer. A high socioeconomic class
suspect is less interesting to the FBI.

------
schme
Slightly off-topic, but the topic of the story made me think about GPS
navigation devices. Not a big deal, but slightly annoying.

~~~
newman314
Well if you have OnStar or a Tesla, remote tracking is possible.

For Tesla, see <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3619088>

~~~
slug
If you carry a cell phone while on, remote tracking is possible too. It's even
easier since usually the wireless signal is better than the multiple satellite
signals that need to reach the gps under (or wherever they put it) the car and
might even be more precise in city environments due to the closer spacing of
cell towers.

I find it odd that people are so concerned about this while they carry a
tracking device with their person all or most of the time...

EDIT: not only that, can be instructed as a real time listening device, if you
are that paranoid :)

~~~
newman314
I believe the context we were talking about was for GPS devices.

I'm not disputing the use case of tracking via cell phone but that's a whole
other ball of wax.

------
edj
This is one of those rare instances lately when news about the actions of the
federal government are positive and encouraging.

------
gerggerg
If they hadn't made this judgment, would there be anything stopping you or I
from legally attaching GPS devices to government official's cars and recording
their movements?

They should overturn the ruling and make it fair game for anyone to track
anyone else. Then we can make google maps mashups for tracking each other and
government officials.

\--edit-- </sarcasm>

~~~
Harkins
While it's a fun turn-the-tables idea, because government is so much bigger,
with more power and resources, this would still be incredibly unequal. You
might be able to track a dozen government officials; the FBI could track every
member of a political minority group (eg. the persecution of MLK).

