Supreme Court: Probable cause warrant needed to use GPS to monitor vehicles

David Kravits of Wired reports that the Supreme Court issued its decision in United States v. Jones, holding that law enforcement must get a probable cause warrant from a judge to track a vehicle by covertly installing a GPS device. The 5-4 decision was so split because four justices refrained from deciding whether such tracking of a duration less than one month constituted a search.

Justice Scalia wrote for the majority and was joined by Justices Kennedy, Thomas, Sotomayor, and Chief Justice John Roberts. This case involved a month of tracking, and all agreed that it constituted a search in that context. However, Justices Alito, Ginsberg, Breyer and Kagan filed a concurrence warning that one's reasonable expectations of privacy may not be implicated by GPS surveillance of a shorter duration than the period at issue here.

The 34-page opinion is embedded below.

10-1259.pdf Download this file

Image via Jason Dunn; PDF via SupremeCourt.gov

This was originally posted to joeross.posterous.com.