This just in from our correspondent George Orwell:
(CNN) — Law enforcement officers may secretly place a GPS device on a person’s car without seeking a warrant from a judge, according to a recent federal appeals court ruling in California.
Drug Enforcement Administration agents in Oregon in 2007 surreptitiously attached a GPS to the silver Jeep owned by Juan Pineda-Moreno, whom they suspected of growing marijuana, according to court papers.
But he appealed on the grounds that sneaking onto a person’s driveway and secretly tracking their car violates a person’s reasonable expectation of privacy.
“They went onto the property several times in the middle of the night without his knowledge and without his permission,” said his lawyer, Harrison Latto.
The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the appeal twice — in January of this year by a three-judge panel, and then again by the full court earlier this month. The judges who affirmed Pineda-Moreno’s conviction did so without comment.
Latto says the Ninth Circuit decision means law enforcement can place trackers on cars, without seeking a court’s permission, in the nine western states the California-based circuit covers.
This case will surely reach the Supreme Court. A Washington DC appeals court came to a different conclusion, saying that cops need a warrant to place electronic surveillance on your car. A former Justice Department attorney compared it to the “old fashioned surveillance” of having a cop in an unmarked car tailing your every move.
He even went on to say that just because your car is in your driveway, on your private property, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy that prevents then from affixing electronic tracking devices on your car. He says you have to build a fence or put your car in the garage to keep cops from tampering with it and gleaning your every move in public with no court approval or supervision.
When these civil liberties cases come up, I always use what I call the Founding Fathers Time Machine Test. Imagine sitting down with Founding Fathers and explaining this case:
RUSS: OK, gentlemen, enough questions about my time pod. I only have a little time to tell you about something terrible happening two centuries in the future. Something perhaps you can prevent by adding a few words to this “Bill of Rights” you’re working on. See, the court decided that the state has the right to put a GPS on your car…
JEFFERSON: A jeepiess? What is a jeepiess?
MADISON: What is a car?
RUSS: OK, in the future… well… first off, a car is like your horse-drawn carriages, except it needs no horse for propulsion. Almost everyone has one and it is the primary way of moving people and goods from place to place. In our future, you really can’t do business or be employed without one in most places.
JEFFERSON: Remarkable. And the jeepiess?
RUSS: It’s initials – G, P, S. It is a technology we have in the future that allows you to accurately track the location of anything on the planet within a few yards.
WASHINGTON: This is madness. Such a thing isn’t possible.
RUSS: Well, Mr. President, it is. We’ve put men on the moon, harnessed the power of the sun, and can instantly view places all over the globe.
JEFFERSON: So this GPS, what does it do, exactly?
RUSS: It’s hard to explain, but imagine that everywhere you went, there was a government clerk going with you, cataloging every location you visit and every route you took to get there and every time of the day you went. Then imagine the government clerk never sleeps and is invisible and you can’t possibly detect him in any way. And that the government can assign that clerk to you without your knowledge and without a court determining that there’s a reasonable chance you’re breaking the law.
MADISON: Tyranny!
JEFFERSON: My friend Mr. Madison is correct; this is scarcely the philosophy of a free and just society! If this stranger’s prophecy rings true, our noble experiment in liberty is extinguished in a mere two centuries.
WASHINGTON: Surely our descendants must be an educated people. I cannot fathom our great country, founded with the blood of patriots against the tyrant of London, turning to tyrants themselves without compelling reason. For what purpose do the agents of the state seek to violate the sacred privacy of the People?
RUSS: To prevent them from growing hemp.
WASHINGTON: Prevent?!?
RUSS: Yes. Some Americans like to smoke the dried flowers of hemp, so our government arrests and imprisons them for cultivating it. We even force workers to surrender cups of their urine for testing to prove they aren’t smoking dried hemp flowers.
JEFFERSON: “Hemp is of first necessity to the wealth & protection of the country!”
RUSS: Some of us are aware of that, too, Mr. President… whoops, I mean, “Mr. Ambassador”… yet 850,000 are arrested over hemp every year…
MADISON: Charlatan! I had set aside my skepticism to hear your tale based on your strange dress and the odd contraption in which you arrived, but to prophecy that America would ever abandon her principles of equality and fairness to seek and punish citizens for growing hemp is an absurdity worthy of Jonathan Swift! Now leave us alone so we can protect the rights of citizens that might actually be proscribed by the state.
WASHINGTON: America punishing hemp farmers… I guess they’d have to punish us, eh, Thomas?
JEFFERSON: What a fantastic tale. Begone, odd visitor.
Your car on private property isn’t private. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Orwell was right.
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[...] time-machine scenario where I try to explain the 9th Circuit ruling to the Founding Fathers, I wrote: It’s hard to explain, but imagine that everywhere you went, there was a government clerk going [...]
[...] time-machine scenario where I try to explain the 9th Circuit ruling to the Founding Fathers, I wrote: It’s hard to explain, but imagine that everywhere you went, there was a government clerk going [...]
[...] time-machine scenario where I try to explain the 9th Circuit ruling to the Founding Fathers, I wrote: It’s hard to explain, but imagine that everywhere you went, there was a government clerk going [...]
[...] that police can sneak up onto your driveway on your private property and secretly place a GPS tracking device on your car to follow you to grow shops (USA v. Juan Pineda-Moreno); [...]
[...] that police can sneak up onto your driveway on your private property and secretly place a GPS tracking device on your car to follow you to grow shops (USA v. Juan Pineda-Moreno); [...]
[...] private property and secretly place a GPS tracking device on your car to follow you to grow shops (USA v. Juan Pineda-Moreno); •that merely being in possession of a firearm while growing marijuana is a crime (USA v. [...]
[...] your window, seeds and stems in your trash, purchases from indoor gardening stores gleaned by tracking your car with GPS without your knowledge, are all still probable causes to bust you. After Prop 19, you could have 31 five gallon buckets [...]
[...] your window, seeds and stems in your trash, purchases from indoor gardening stores gleaned by tracking your car with GPS without your knowledge, are all still probable causes to bust you. After Prop 19, you could have 31 five gallon buckets [...]
I’ve been a cop for 16 years but only used GPS trackers on 1 case – I had to have a warrant to do it because Washington state law can be more restrictive than Federal law. I think if you find a tracker on your vehicle, that it would be funny if you put it onto another car… say a local politician or fire engine or something funny like that!
[...] [...]
how much you wanna bet that if you found it and destroyed it you would get arrested for damage to police property and probably obstruction too… im sure there will be more charges… like all the times you were speeding
if cameras can automatically send you speeding and red light tickets, why wouldnt they implement the gps trackers in with that…
they would… and they will
If the founding fathers all of a sudden showed up as like team america, I don’t think people would even listen to them. We would just tell them that they don’t understand, and cast them out as zombies…
Legal to follow-spy on us as we secretly CURE CANCER…these evil empire morons. The NORML conference MP3 audio is a wonderful resource. Was listening to Paul Armentano speak on palliative and curative usage. He can use the f*ck word almost as well as my hero Abbie Hoffman. The second part of his talk he FAILS to mention Rick Simpson (son of simple),yet it was a Rick Simpson lesson. Everyone knows the caveats of Dr. Lester Grinspoon. Yes, Ricky has a formal education that doesn’t give him modern credibility,but Master Rick Simpson must get his due at NORML. I remember touring with Jack Herer,and his stories of the rejection from NORML for years and years. High Times,also mocked Jack early on,yet now he’s sacrosanct. We need a global message to use Cannabis to cure disease. Cambodia Medical Cannabis Association Phnom Penh
Again we see liberties taken away due to the drug war, WTF. We keep loosing our freedoms, privacy and rights and we never get them back. They take and take until we as citizens are enemy number one and while they seek us out they leave a path of destruction behind them.
We fight using the same laws they use against us but they use the law to smack us in the face and they choose to change it all together or ignore it. This should have been a slam dunk for this man, that they placed this GPS on his vehicle while on his property, without a warrant, come on! This Judge should have known that he cant set law and only a higher court should, this kinda removal of our rights should be challenged through the supreme court but for now this has taken our country back hundreds of years.
This whole thing Reminds me of a movie I just watched last week, called “Death of a President” 2006, its a Moc-Doc about “WHAT IF” Bush was assassinated. It shows what freedoms would be lost if a President in this day and age was killed and how we or the government would deal with it. Its amazing how fear can drive people to quickly make wrong choices but also how quickly and easy it is for the Government to take away our rights and stamp out any effort to stop it from happening. The Rights like now, that get taken away, we will never get back, very scary times indeed.
This mock encounter hits the nail on the head! In short, the founding fathers would call this BS. When we have a country of judges who hold stock in the prison factories, bet surely that the prisons will never be without prisoners when there is a dollar to be made! They use our tax dollars to hold a “high” office that by law can not speak about the truths of cannabis, so we get lies and prisons all on OUR dime. 1984 is here.
NORML ,are the REAL paleoconservatives. Paleolibertarians like Dr. Ayn Rand Paul ,flip-flop on medical marijuana in Kentucky hempfields (Aqua Buddha youth). These people are a disgrace to their ideology. The wonderful, Gov. Gary Johnson seems to be a man of principles,which bodes well for CHANGE. WarBama is a global ruse, so belief in American two-party democracy has been severely curtailed. Thank you Richard Lee etc…Prop 19 is our great HOPE…focus on getting the vote out. The voice of the people is always relevant.