U.S. government to fight for warrantless GPS tracking

by Don Reisinger

March 19, 2013 7:36 AM PDT

The Obama Administration is headed to court today to argue that warrantless GPS tracking is just fine.

The administration will present its arguments before a federal appeals court today, despite the U.S. Supreme Court last year ruling that a warrant was needed to attach a GPS device to a suspected criminal’s vehicle

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57575085-83/u.s-government-to-fight-for-warrantless-gps-tracking/

 

Chryslers refusal to recall several million Jeeps has made mainstream media, with the media piling on Chrysler for refusing, reminding the public the the taxpayers bailed out Chrysler (now owned by Fiat), showing images of burned out vehicles, etc.

I owned a 1994 Jeep Grand Cherokee, and I loved it. In fact, we are looking for another one. The fuel pump went out one time, which is located in the tank, and I had to drop the tank, to replace it. There’s a heavy duty skid plate, grounding wires, and the tank is heavy duty steel, and I was impressed at the care that was taken to protect the tank.

So when they said these vehicles were being recalled for fire hazards from rear end crashes, the big bullshit flag went up. Just about every vehicle in the country has a tank in the rear of the car, and if they are hit hard enough, they can cause a fire. Most are not nearly as protected as the jeep tank.

I’ve been following these recalls, and since about 2006 they have gone from a few a year, to millions a year, and almost always the recall is due to very benign reasons, and are tied to electrical components. Jiffy lube has a pretty good list. It’s a massive amount of cars, and the list only goes from 2008-2010…

http://www.jiffylubeca.com/vehicle_safety.php

Now, the FBI has been caught many times installing tracking devices on vehicles without warrants.

Justice Department Refuses to Release GPS Tracking Memos

By Catherine Crump, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 11:12am

Two key memos outlining the Justice Department’s views about when Americans can be surreptitiously tracked with GPS technology are being kept secret by the department despite a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the ACLU to force their release. The FBI’s general counsel discussed the existence of the two memos publicly last year, yet the Justice Department is refusing to release them without huge redactions. (You can see the heavily censored versions sent to the ACLU here and here, and our original FOIA request here.)

…

The Supreme Court has weighed in on location tracking, but the government still has wide latitude to exploit new technologies and legal uncertainty. In February 2012, the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision in U.S. v. Jones, holding that the Fourth Amendment restricts the circumstances in which the government may attach a GPS device to a car and secretly track its movements. Although the Court’s decision in Jones makes clear that the government’s attachment and use of a GPS tracker on a car constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment, it does not say whether that search requires a warrant from a judge—a crucial protection because it forces agents to justify their actions to a neutral outsider. Furthermore, the court’s opinion does not address other methods of location tracking, such as cell phone tracking, drones, or license plate readers.

http://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty-national-security/justice-department-refuses-release-gps-tracking-memos

Current technology to track people has been reduced to the size of a chip, easily installed in any device designed to replace a ‘defective device’, and generally these ‘defective devices’ have some source of power to them.

The government back in 2010 was pushing to put trackers on every vehicle, private or not.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=9&ved=0CHwQFjAI&url=http%3A%2F%2Ftransweb.sjsu.edu%2FMTIportal%2Fresearch%2Fpublications%2Fdocuments%2F2983%2520Vehicle%2520Tracking.pdf&ei=hl2vUabvEcejyAGci4GYCQ&usg=AFQjCNHO21WtYD7OCiJSHQaxEDvO9xOR-A&sig2=8svm_eZ7iFdty-b15YhRyA&bvm=bv.47380653,d.aWc&cad=rja

Progressive insurance has been promoting their ‘voluntary’ tracking devices to ‘reduce’ your rates. Umm, yeah…

It seems to me, that as we get closer to civil collapse, and martial law, they would go after vehicles like jeeps that can get into remote locations…The govt, the most paranoid group of people on the planet, have been actively tracking people unbeknowst to them using cell phones, and other creepy methods.

Cell Phone Data Requests

Tellingly, in U.S. v. Jones, after the US government lost its case in the Supreme Court with the GPS device, it went right back to the district court and asserted it could get Jones’ cell phone site location data without a warrant. EFF has long argued cell location data, which can map your precise location for days or weeks at a time, is highly personal, and should require a warrant from a judge.

In July 2012, the New York Times reported that federal, state, and local law enforcement officials had requested all kinds of cell phone data, including mappings of suspects’ locations, a staggering 1.3 million times in the previous year. Worse, the real number was “almost certainly much higher” given they often request multiple people’s data with one request. The FBI also employs highly controversial “tower dumps” where they get the location information on everyone within a particular radius, potentially violating the privacy of thousands of innocent people with one request.

Stingray Interceptors

In late 2012, we reported on the secretive new device the FBI has been increasingly using for surveillance known as a IMSI catcher, or “Stingray.” A Stingray acts as a fake cell phone tower and locks onto all devices in a certain area to find a cell phone’s location, or perhaps even intercept phone calls and texts. Given it potentially sucks up thousands of innocent persons’ data, we called it an “unconstitutional, all you can eat data buffet.”

The FBI has gone to great lengths to keep this technology secret, even going as far as refusing to tell judges its full range of capabilities. Recently, documents obtained by EPIC Privacy through a FOIA request shed more light on the devices.

License Plate Readers

In cities across the country, local police departments and other law enforcement agencies are installing automated license plate readers that create databases of location information about individual cars (and their drivers). These readers can be mounted by the side of a busy road, scanning every car that rolls by, or on the dash of a police car, allowing officers to drive through and scan all the plates in a parking lot.

In Washington, D.C., nearly every block is captured by one of the more than 250 cameras scanning over 1,800 images per minute. In Los Angeles, more than two dozen different law enforcement agencies operate license plate readers to collect over 160 million data points. This surveillance is untargeted, recording the movements of any car passes by. In cities that have become partners in the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, or have entered into another data-sharing agreement, this location information is at the fingertips of those federal agents.

Drone Authorization

On top of all this, the FBI is one of just a few dozen public agencies that has an authorization to fly a drone in the U.S. There is no evidence at this time that they are actively pursuing or using a specific device.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/01/what-fbi-doesnt-want-you-know-about-its-surveillance-techniques

So, if the government doesn’t like you, they can tell when you are, and target you, for elimanation.

http://www.gps-tracker.com/vehicle-tracker?start=20

Let’s be clear, the US govt will not be happy until they can know location, habits, political views, incomes, etc of every individual in the United States…

If this isn’t big brother, I don’t know what is.