MAKE POLICE GET A WARRANT FOR GPS TRACKING

Should government agents be allowed to plant a GPS device in your car
and track your movements wherever you go? In fact, should they be
allowed to do the same to every citizen, every day, without even
bothering to prove the need to a judge?

The government's answer, recited by one of its attorneys to a
skeptical Supreme Court on Tuesday, is yes. Deputy Solicitor General
Michael Dreeben told the court that, according to its own precedents,
police could secretly track the justices themselves.

The case is an unusually pointed example of the way advances in
technology are eroding principles that the Founding Fathers wrote into
the Constitution 224 years ago to protect citizens for onerous
government intrusion -- in this instance the Fourth Amendment's
prohibition on "unreasonable searches and seizures."

No so long ago, police who wanted to follow someone had to mount a
difficult and expensive surveillance operation, which inherently
limited the practice. Now they can plant a GPS device and monitor it
on a computer, which is what police in Washington, D.C., did to track
a suspected cocaine dealer. They put a Global Positioning System
tracker in his car and followed his movements for 28 days, tying him
to a stash house where they recovered drugs, weapons and cash.

The dealer was arrested and convicted, but an appeals court overturned
the conviction because the police's search warrant had expired and
didn't cover Maryland, where police had finally managed to stick the
device on his Jeep.

The government wants the conviction reinstated, but if the court
agrees, the principle won't apply just to cocaine dealers. It will
apply to everyone. And the tactic could be used not just by police but
by other government authorities.

The justices seemed appropriately skeptical of the government lawyers.
"So if you win," said Justice Stephen Breyer, "you suddenly produce
what sounds like 1984," George Orwell's classic novel in which an
all-seeing "Big Brother" watches all citizens all the time.

The government's argument is that police don't need a warrant when
they track people on public roads where they can be watched by cameras
and other drivers -- and where police could physically tail them
without a warrant.

But of course, the technology changes everything. Even with speed
cameras, red-light cameras and a squadron of pursuers, authorities
would have a very hard time amassing a record of every place someone
travels for 28 days.

The idea is, indeed, Orwellian, not to mention downright "creepy and
un-American," to use the words of the chief justice of the 9th Circuit
Court of Appeals. At a minimum, police should first have to convince a
judge that there's probable cause to issue a search warrant -- and use
it properly.

The Founding Fathers, brilliant though they were, could not possibly
have envisioned GPS technology. But they certainly understood the
principles of personal freedom, and two centuries later those haven't
changed a bit.

First and foremost, the Constitution they wrote guarantees individual
rights against unnecessary government intrusion. Let's hope that when
the Supreme Court rules in this case, it does the same.