ACLU Welcomes Start of Public Discussion of Privacy Implications of License Plate Tracking By Law Enforcement

The ACLU of the Nation's Capital today urged executive and legislative branches of government in the District to take note of the report in the Washington Post November 20 on the "vast system that tracks the comings and goings of anyone driving around the District."

GPS tracking case goes to Supreme Court

UPDATE: The Supreme Court will hear oral argument in this case on November 8, 2011.

On October 3, the ACLU-NCA, together with the National ACLU, filed its amicus brief in the Supreme Court in this important case, which asks whether the Fourth Amendment's protection of personal privacy will stand in the face of technological advances that can enable the government to learn almost anything about anyone.

Without a warrant, the FBI and DC police attached a GPS transmitter to Mr. Jones' car, turning his vehicle into a surveillance device that informed the police, every 10 seconds for 28 days, exactly where the car was. The government says that was OK, because when a person travels on public streets and roads any bystander can see his car. But no bystander can see a car everywhere it goes for 28 days.

Our brief draws an analogy to the landmark case of Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967), in whch the Supreme Court rejected the government's argument that no search warrant was needed to attach a listening device to the outside of a telephone booth to eavesdrop on the conversation inside, because the outside of the phone booth was not a private place. The Court ruled that “the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public . . . is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. . . . But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected.” Here Mr. Jones did not knowingly expose every detail of his travels for a month to the public. Like the content of Mr. Katz's telephone calls, the route of his travels should be constitutionally protected.

Cash is not a threat to air safety

Our client in this case was detained, interrogated, and ultimately arrested at the St. Louis airport when TSA agents found approximately $4,700 cash in his carry-on bag. TSA has statutory authority to conduct administrative searches for threats to transportation, but it has no authority to search for evidence of ordinary crimes, and its conduct here also violated the Fourth Amendment because carrying $4,700 in cash does not create probable cause to believe that any crime has occurred or is afoot. (In fact, the cash was income from the sale of books, T-shirts, and similar items at a political event.)