Court says police can use GPS to track anyone | Technically Incorrect - CNET News

Court says police can use GPS to track anyone | Technically Incorrect - CNET News: "I was moved to virtual paralysis when I learned that an appeals court in Wisconsin decided that police can stick a GPS-tracking device on anyone they want without getting a search warrant. Even if that person is not suspected of anything more than living, breathing and expectorating.
The Fourth District U.S. Court of Appeals doesn't seem terribly happy about its own decision. However, the court decided, after much rumination, that GPS does not involve searching and seizing.
Which means that any information gained by sticking a secret GPS-tracking device on someone's car will only yield information that could have been gleaned through normal visual surveillance.
Some might wonder, normal visual surveillance by whom? R2D2? Spiderman?
The decision stemmed from a case against Michael Sveum, a Madison resident who was accused of stalking. In his case, police got a warrant to slip a GPS on his car.
Sveum argued that this contravened his Fourth Amendment rights, which protect him against unreasonable search and seizure. His lawyers said that he was followed out of the public view, in intimate places such as his garage.
The court begged to differ, declaring that an officer could have used his eyes to see when Sveum entered and left his garage."

"Larry Dupuis, legal director of the ACLU in Wisconsin, does. He told the Chicago Tribune: "The idea that you can go and attach anything you want to somebody else's property without any court supervision, that's wrong. Without a warrant, they can do this on anybody they want."
Even the appeals court itself is "more than a little troubled" by its own misdirected thinking and suggested that lawmakers in Wisconsin regulate the use of GPS by its officials."