Landmark Ruling By Supreme Court Prohibits GPS Monitoring Without Warrant

In a landmark decision issued today, the United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the Fourth Amendment requires law enforcement to get a warrant before they may attach a GPS device to a vehicle in order to track the movements of a suspect in a criminal investigation. In the case of United States v. Jones, investigators had attached a GPS unit to the undercarriage of a vehicle driven by a suspected drug dealer. The GPS unit was configured to use a cell phone to call and report his location. Over about a month of time, nearly 4,000 pages of data about his location was sent to law enforcement. During the month-long surveillance, they went underneath Jones' vehicle a second time and replaced the battery.

The Supreme Court held that the property interests of the vehicle's driver required the police to first obtain a warrant before using a GPS device. Importantly, the Court distinguished the case of Jones from a prior decision of U.S. v. Knotts, which had upheld the use of a beeper hidden in a canister to track a chemical shipment. Because the beeper in that case was placed with the consent of the container's owner before it was transferred to the suspect, it was different than Jones. No one in Jones consented to the placement of the GPS device.

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