NY Appeals Court Strikes Down Warrantless GPS Tracking
New York state’s highest court ruled Tuesday that police can’t use GPS technology to track criminal suspects without a warrant in a decision at least one Long Island law enforcement official said would add an unnecessary step in an investigation. A spokesman for Nassau District Attorney Kathleen Rice said she disagreed with the decision of the state Court of Appeals, which ruled 4-3 that satellite tracking devices violate the rights of suspects unless authorized by a judge. But the ruling, in a case stemming from an upstate robbery investigation, won’t compromise current investigations in Nassau involving GPS devices, spokesman Eric Phillips said.
The court’s majority said state police in upstate Latham conducted an illegal search when they attached a tracking device to a van belonging to robbery suspect. Without a judge’s approval, “the use of these powerful devices presents a significant and, to our minds, unacceptable risk of abuse,” Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman wrote.
In a dissenting opinion, Judge Susan Read wrote that banning warrantless electronic surveillance “unnecessarily burdens” police and the courts.
Rice “agrees with the dissenting judges and believes the only difference between visual surveillance by officers and a GPS being stuck on the exterior of a car on a public street is the use of technology,” Phillips said.
Critics say warrantless use of tracking devices poses a threat to privacy and violates constitutional protections against illegal searches and seizures.
“In an era of rapidly advancing surveillance technology, this is an extraordinarily important ruling,” said Christopher Dunn, associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.
Phillips said Nassau investigators will seek judicial authorization before using GPS devices. “The office will have to jump through another hoop to continue to use them, so that’s what we’ll do,” Phillips said.
A Nassau police spokesman, Det. Sgt. Anthony Repalone, said Tuesday it is routine to seek court warrants allowing surveillance. “This is one additional thing that we would apply for,” he said.
Suffolk police will abide by the court’s ruling, a spokeswoman said. The Suffolk district attorney’s office did not return calls for comment.
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On the one hand, the police could just assign an officer to follow you around all day, as you drove on public roads, without a warrant... On the other hand, that approach is costly, conspicuous and -- if you're good -- it can be evaded. A GPS unit is cheap, hard to notice or evade, always-on and always accurate. It can also track you on private property, which is meaningless when the extent of private property is just a driveway, but significant if the private property is a large farm or ranch. So, large private tracts aside, the GPS tracker is just like the old fashioned officer-following-you-around, but it also isn't, for all the reasons noted above. The question really becomes where to draw the line. For my part, I think this decision is correct. But I also recognize that the decision here is not between obvious black and white, but rather where to draw the line between varying shades of gray.