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Police use GPS to track suspects despite murky law
AP
Craig Klyve of the Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation works in his AP – Craig Klyve of the Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation works in his office Friday, May 22, 2009, …
By RYAN J. FOLEY, Associated Press Writer Ryan J. Foley, Associated Press Writer – Mon May 25, 3:26 am ET

MADISON, Wis. – Investigators were tipped that habitual criminal Bernardo Garcia was back to making and dealing methamphetamine in 2005 but they needed more evidence to nail him.

So they secretly installed a GPS to his borrowed Ford Tempo. The technology showed Garcia often drove to land in northwestern Wisconsin, where investigators found a stash of meth-making equipment.

Garcia, who once bragged he could make meth across from a police station without getting caught, drove to the scene while investigators were there. He was arrested, convicted and sent to prison.

Across the nation, investigators are using GPS to catch drug dealers, burglars, stalkers and other criminals. Police say the devices, which rely on satellites to determine locations, are similar to trailing a suspect with officers but more effective.

"It's been a very good investigative tool," said Craig Klyve of the Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation, whose agents install GPS on cars up to 75 times a year. "The technology allows you to track and maintain a history of movements of a vehicle over a period of time in a way that your surveillance doesn't get burned and is much less manpower-intensive. It's a way to work smarter."

Privacy advocates and criminal defense lawyers beg to differ. They say the technology goes beyond surveillance and could be used to create a detailed, around-the-clock profile of one's movements. Because the trackers are so affordable, they view them as a privacy threat that could reveal one's political, religious and personal associations to law enforcement.

Courts are now grappling with how to balance privacy rights against an investigative technique hailed by state and local police, the Drug Enforcement Administration and FBI.

"We're seeing more and more cases," said Jennifer Granick, civil liberties director at the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation. "The law is struggling to understand the way in which these kinds of sophisticated tracking technologies change the calculus for what is private and what is an overly invasive technique."

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1983 that drivers on public streets do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy and police could place radio "beepers" in cars without warrants. Whether courts will treat GPS differently remains unclear.

Earlier this month, New York's highest court ruled 4-3 that police must obtain search warrants before they can secretly attach devices to vehicles.

But the week before, a Wisconsin appeals court ruled GPS tracking did not involve a search or seizure under the Fourth Amendment so a warrant was unnecessary. The court warned "police are seemingly free to secretly track anyone's public movements with a GPS device" and called for a state law to prevent abuse.

Some state lawmakers responded by drafting a bill that would require police to obtain warrants first.

"I don't want the government to be able to track and monitor people wherever they go," said Rep. Marlin Schneider, a Democrat. "One of our great freedoms in this country is our right to travel and that's undermined if we're under constant surveillance."

The federal appeals court in Chicago in 2007 approved the warrantless GPS tracking of Garcia, now 35.

Judge Richard Posner wrote police had ample reason to suspect Garcia of crimes — but acknowledged the technology could one day be used for massive police surveillance. A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., will rule in a similar case soon involving a drug dealer busted with the help of GPS.

Klyve said his agency does not get a warrant before installing the devices in most cases, when vehicles are parked in public places. He said agents will obtain warrants if installation is done on private property or requires opening a car hood or trunk.

Some devices, such as the one that helped nab Garcia, must be retrieved and have the tracking information downloaded to a computer.

Others allow their whereabouts to be downloaded by cell phone for real-time tracking or send out alerts when entering targeted areas. Klyve said those techniques have allowed police to catch serial burglars and arsonists in the act.

A company called StarChase LLC is even working with the Los Angeles Police Department and others to test technology in which squad cars shoot miniature GPS tags onto passing vehicles. The GPS sends real-time information to headquarters, where dispatchers could send officers to catch suspects and set up roadblocks. The goal would be to reduce the danger associated with chases.

As the technology quickly advances, privacy advocates worry the law is not catching up. Bruce Rosen, a Madison defense lawyer who has represented suspects tracked by GPS, said the public has no idea how police are using the technology if warrants are not required.

"Where no paperwork is being created and people are free to do this, I think it's going to have very bad consequences," he said. "These kinds of activities have to be subject to review, scrutiny and accountability."

But his firm has learned a benefit: the power to prove innocence. The firm represented a man suspected of stalking his ex-wife and beating her. A GPS secretly installed on his vehicle showed he was not at the scene at the time of the alleged beating and the case was dismissed.

"I like the technology because it has the ability to convict the guilty and exonerate the innocent. Other than DNA, I don't know anything that does it quite as well," said David Schumann, a Janesville lawyer who runs a blog on legal issues related to GPS evidence. "And unlike DNA, it will save tons and tons of taxpayer money and police time."

And mishaps occur.

Agents try to surreptitiously install the devices but have been caught by surprised suspects, Klyve said. In one case, a driver got into an accident, found the GPS and threw it into Lake Michigan. In another, a car equipped with the device was crushed.
 

Small GPS devices help prosecutors win convictions

By MITCH STACY, Associated Press WriterThu Aug 28, 4:16 PM ET
 

Like millions of motorists, Eric Hanson used a GPS unit in his Chevrolet TrailBlazer to find his way around. He probably didn't expect that prosecutors would eventually use it too — to help convict him of killing four family members.

Prosecutors in suburban Chicago analyzed data from the Garmin GPS device to pinpoint where Hanson had been on the morning after his parents were fatally shot and his sister and brother-in-law bludgeoned to death in 2005. He was convicted of the killings earlier this year and sentenced to death.

Hanson's trial was among recent criminal cases around the country in which authorities used GPS navigation devices to help establish a defendant's whereabouts. Experts say such evidence will almost certainly become more common in court as GPS systems become more affordable and show up in more vehicles.

"There's no real doubt," said Alan Brill, a Minnesota-based computer forensics expert who has worked with the FBI and Secret Service. "This follows every other technology that turns out to have information of forensic value. I think what we're seeing is evolutionary."

Using technology to track a person's location is nothing new. For years, police have been able to trace cell phone signals and use other dashboard devices such as automatic toll-collection systems to confirm a driver's whereabouts.

But the growing popularity of GPS systems — in cars, cell phones and other handheld devices — gives authorities another powerful tool to track suspects.

Among recent cases:

• In September, a man in Butte, Mont., pleaded guilty to rape shortly after a judge ruled that evidence from the GPS unit in his car could be used against him at trial. Prosecutors planned to use it to show that Brian D. Adolf "prowled" through town looking for a victim.

• In New Brighton, Pa., a trucker's GPS system led police to charge him with setting his own home on fire. GPS records showed his rig was parked about 100 yards from his house at the time of the fire.

• In the case of a missing Chicago-area woman named Stacy Peterson, investigators sought GPS records from the SUV owned by her husband, former police officer Drew Peterson. She still hasn't been found, and no one has been charged.

Developed for the military, GPS navigation systems started showing up in cars in the 1990s. Prices have dropped sharply in the past few years, and many units are now available for less than $150.

The Consumer Electronics Association estimates 20 percent of American households own a portable GPS system and 9 percent have vehicles equipped with in-dash systems.

A GPS unit receives signals from satellites to determine its position on the ground. That data can be used by mapping software to display the device's location to within a few yards.

Detectives are often able to extract map searches and desired destinations that have been entered into a GPS unit by the user. Some devices are equipped with a "track back" feature that can show where the unit was at a particular time.

"What we're dealing with here is a use of the technology that I don't think the good people at Magellan or Garmin or TomTom really thought about when they were developing it," said Brill, referring to manufacturers of GPS devices.

Law enforcement sometimes uses secretly planted GPS devices to monitor suspects. The practice, often done without a warrant or court order, has been criticized by privacy advocates who argue that it is unconstitutional.

The GPS feature on a cell phone has already helped solve at least one crime. In 2006, police in Virginia Beach, Va., used the GPS on a homicide victim's cell phone to find the phone and her purse in a garbage can behind a home. The home was linked to the man who was eventually charged with killing her.

Jon Price, a trainer at Garmin Ltd., the leading maker of commercial GPS units in the U.S., started getting calls five years ago to work with law enforcement in cases involving GPS data from the company's units was being used as evidence.

Price estimates he's helped with about 25 criminal cases, some of them involving GPS-equipped boats running drugs out of South America. He's testified as an expert witness in a half-dozen cases, including the Hanson murder trial.

"Typically the GPS data being used is for the purpose of contradicting (defendants') alibis," Price said.

GPS data is usually just one part of the criminal case because attorneys also have to prove the defendant possessed the unit and entered the information into it.

But Renee Hutchins, a University of Maryland law professor and former defense attorney, recently wrote an article suggesting GPS data is protected under the Fourth Amendment. She said police should only be allowed to acquire it by showing probable cause and getting a warrant signed by a judge.

"I think that in the last couple of years, people are starting to be aware that if they have these units in their car, people can keep track of you," Hutchins said. "I think it's a growing public awareness. The problem is ... that most people feel like, 'I'm not doing anything wrong, so who cares?' But I think that's the wrong way of looking at it."