COMMENTARY: On the right track

By Jermaine A. Wyrick As technology advances, seemingly privacy diminishes. In a recent Supreme Court case however, U.S. v. Jones, the court decided that privacy is still highly valued. The Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable search and seizures. In a watershed decision, Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, (1967) the court held the Fourth Amendment protects a person's "reasonable expectation of privacy," when an eavesdropping device was attached to a telephone booth. In Soldal v. Cook County, 506 U.S. 56 (1992), the court held that towing away a trailer home without the owner's consent constitutes a seizure even if this did not invade the occupants' personal privacy. In Alderman v. United States, 394 U.S. 165 (1969), the court held that the Fourth Amendment rights of homeowners were implicated by the use of a surreptitiously planted listening device to monitor third-party conversations that occurred within their home. The Jones case decided that police must secure a search warrant before using Global Positioning System (GPS) technology to intrusively track a suspect. Law enforcement attached a GPS device to a Jeep vehicle registered to the wife of Antoine Jones, a Washington, D.C. nightclub owner, and suspected drug kingpin. The GPS device monitored his movements for 28 days and tracked him to a suburban Fort Washington stash house where $850,000 in cash, 97 kilograms of cocaine, and 1 kilogram of cocaine base were recovered. Interestingly, in 2005, a judge issued a warrant authorizing the use of the GPS device within 10 days while Jones' Jeep was in Washington. Instead, it was installed after 11 days, while the vehicle was parked in a public parking lot in Maryland. Antoine Jones did not consent to the device, and he was convicted of drug trafficking conspiracy charges. The government relied upon the United States, v. Knotts, 460 U.S. 276, 281 (1983) case, to support their position, "A person traveling in an automobile on public thoroughfares has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements from one place to another." Knotts involved a situation where law enforcement monitored a beeper in a container. In Jones, the Supreme Court rationalized that the government's installation of the GPS device to monitor the vehicle's movements, constitutes a search. Justice Antonin Scalia stated, "By attaching the device to the Jeep that Jones was using officers encroached on a protected area." Further, "The government physically occupied private property for the purpose of obtaining information." Moreover, "by surreptitiously placing the GPS device on Jones' car, technically committed a trespass and thereby rendered the owner of the car not secure in his effects, making whatever evidence was gathered from the device the results of an unreasonable search." Further, Justice Samuel Alito opined based upon a driver's expectation of privacy, "Society's expectation has been that law enforcement agents and others would not - and indeed, in the main, simply could not - secretly monitor and catalogue every single movement of an individual's car for a very long period." Moreover, Justice Stephen Breyer added, "there is nothing to prevent the police or the government from monitoring 24 hours a day the public movement of every citizen of the United States and that's a job that can be done by tireless computers, not fallible human beings." Justice Sotomayor in her concurrence stated, "GPS monitoring generates a precise, comprehensive record of a person's public movements that reflects a wealth of detail about her familial, political, professional, religious, and sexual associations." Further, "Awareness that the government may be watching chills associational and expressive freedoms. And the government's unrestrained power to assemble data that reveal private aspects of identity is susceptible to abuse." Moreover, this "may alter the relationship between citizen and government in a way that is inimical to democratic society." Hence, this decision is on the right track in protecting the right to privacy we enjoy as citizens. ---------- Jermaine A. Wyrick is an attorney for the Law Offices of Jermaine A. Wyrick P.L.L.C. His areas of practice are Criminal Defense Personal Injury, and Police Misconduct.He can be reached at (313) 964-8950, or by email at Attyjaw1@Ameritech.net. Published: Fri, Mar 9, 2012