GPS Tracking Case Could Have Wide-Ranging Fallout

The Supreme Court’s decision on how the use of GPS surveillance violated a person’s constitutional rights may lead to public safety and financial repercussions, according to experts.

The High Court confirmed in U.S. v. Jones that the placement of a GPS device on a vehicle for long-term tracking without an extended warrant was illegal under the Fourth Amendment. But in the absence of legislation that regulates the use of GPS tracking, the narrow ruling may stunt law enforcement’s use of the technology and consequently increase personnel costs incurred during investigations. Lt. Raymond E. Foster, a retired officer with the Los Angeles Police Department, said cases that call for using GPS tracking devices might now become too expensive for departments to handle, since the technology allowed officers to collect data remotely, instead of assigning multiple people to monitor a suspect. “There’s going to be some cases where they go, ‘We don’t have enough for a warrant and we don’t want to put a team of eight to 10 people on this for the next 72 hours, so we’re not going to work this case,’” Foster said. “So yeah, that’ll happen. That’s just logical.”