The Government's New Right to Track Your Every Move With GPS

[zabet]

The Government's New Right to Track Your Every Move With GPS

Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn't violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway - and no reasonable expectation that the government isn't tracking your movements.

That is the bizarre - and scary - rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants - with no need for a search warrant. (Read about one man's efforts to escape the surveillance state.)

It is a dangerous decision - one that, as the dissenting judges warned, could turn America into the sort of totalitarian state imagined by George Orwell. It is particularly offensive because the judges added insult to injury with some shocking class bias: the little personal privacy that still exists, the court suggested, should belong mainly to the rich.

This case began in 2007, when Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents decided to monitor Juan Pineda-Moreno, an Oregon resident who they suspected was growing marijuana. They snuck onto his property in the middle of the night and found his Jeep in his driveway, a few feet from his trailer home. Then they attached a GPS tracking device to the vehicle's underside.

Continued here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/08599201315000;_ylt=AsR2TmWbaBRPu4BwG2T3tVKs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTNrZTkybms1BGFzc2V0A3RpbWUvMjAxMDA4MjUvMDg1OTkyMDEzMTUwMDAEY2NvZGUDbW9zdHBvcHVsYXIEY3BvcwM0BHBvcwMxBHB0A2hvbWVfY29rZQRzZWMDeW5faGVhZGxpbmVfbGlzdARzbGsDdGhlZ292ZXJubWVu

[Cirque du So-What]

1. Unless you're guilty of something, you have nothing to fear from the gov't tracking your every move!

:sarcasm:

[Better Today]

2. Wow, this really is a class issue since only those of lower and

middle class are likely to have to leave their cars out of the garage, or don't have a garage. This place is really starting to get scary.

[thereismore]

3. You nailed it. nt

[pinboy3niner]

4. Also: school considers RFID's to track students

MSNBC did a story on this yesterday. This is the local story I found:


New Canaan Considers Tracking Devices for Students
Updated 11:49 AM EDT, Mon, Aug 23, 2010

In the tony town of New Canaan, students might someday get tracking tags along with their textbooks.

No decisions have yet been made, but school officials plan to look into the possibility of adding radio frequency tags to student or staff ID cards, or place them on school property, like laptops, the New Canaan Advertiser reports.
<snip>

The technology could be used to track people within the school, something district transportation coordinator Roy Walder said could help during an emergency, such as a fire or a school-wide evacuation, the Advertiser reports, and tracking who is coming and going from the open campus.

Of course, parents might not be thrilled about placing a tracking device on their children, Jim Kucharczyk, a board member, said.

http://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/local-beat/New-Canaan-Considers-Tracking-Students--101302154.html

[TalkingDog]

5. Want rights? STFU and get to work making some wealth, you shiftless muthafukkas. n/t