Supreme Court to weigh in on warrantless GPS tracking

In a move with far-reaching privacy implications, the U.S. Supreme Court has decided to hear a case involving the government's authority to conduct prolonged GPS tracking of suspects in criminal cases without first obtaining a court warrant. The government has argued that it has the authority to conduct such searches ; privacy advocates have argued that such tracking violates Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure. The Supreme Court's decision in the case will be pivotal because lesser courts around the U.S. have appeared split on the issue in recent years, with some upholding warrantless GPS tracking and others rejecting it. Privacy and civil rights groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) have filed friend-of-the-court briefs arguing that the level of surveillance enabled by modern GPS tracking devices is highly intrusive. They insist that law enforcement authorities need to obtain warrants based on probable cause before using GPS devices to track suspects...more