Supreme Court Rules Warrant Needed for GPS Tracking

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Let’s start off the week with some good news. We now have a ruling in the case of Antoine Jones, who was convicted on drug charges after police attached a GPS tracking device to his car:

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that police must get a search warrant before using GPS technology to track criminal suspects….Associate Justice Antonin Scalia said that the government’s installation of a GPS device, and its use to monitor the vehicle’s movements, constitutes a search, meaning that a warrant is required.

“By attaching the device to the Jeep” that Jones was using, “officers encroached on a protected area,” Scalia wrote.

….Justice Samuel Alito also wrote a concurring opinion in which he said the court should have gone further and dealt with GPS tracking of wireless devices, like mobile phones. He was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan.

Count me with Alito, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kagan. If police want to track your cell phone, they should get a warrant. End of story.