They know where you are

Police should be required to obtain a search warrant for any GPS surveillance that lasts more than 24 hours, says a new report from the Constitution Project, a Washington think tank. And the group says a warrant should always be required when authorities install a tracking device on a vehicle.

A member of the group, Patricia Wald, a former federal judge, tells The Associated Press the debate over GPS tracking is “one instance of the much broader problem of regulating new technology.”

The report is being issued by the group’s liberty and security committee in advance of the U.S. Supreme Court’s consideration of the issue in November. It says, “The government should not have unchecked discretion to electronically track anyone, anywhere, at any time without cause.”

The Obama administration says requiring warrants would hamper law enforcement and isn’t necessary because the surveillance monitors movements on public streets.

The Fourth Amendment is clear: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Can we find any wording in there that resembles: “But the police can use sophisticated methods to follow someone around for a day, listening in on their conversations and reading their electronic letters without seeking a warrant”?

Accused drug dealers and other potential targets may not be very sympathetic subjects, but who today can safely assume a burgeoning federal government might not someday be interested in our travels and activities, whether the source of that interest be related to political activities, tax collections or enforcement of regulations not yet imagined?

The “movement on public streets” argument is interesting, obviously meant to imply the government has merely come up with a more cost-effective way to do what could have been done by a dozen police officers, four per eight-hour shift, tailing the suspect around town in their black sedans.

But as the Constitution Project points out, that’s part of the point. Where logistics once required police to pick and choose the worst of the suspected bad guys, these technologies now allow the government to effectively put all Americans under surveillance, just to see what might turn up.

Presenting evidence to a judge and acquiring a search warrant is a minimal inconvenience to law enforcement, designed to make sure a third party asks how serious a crime is suspected and what evidence exists to violate the constitutional presumption that free men should be able to assume their “persons, houses, papers, and effects … are secure.”