>prompted the FBI to turn off about 3,000 GPS tracking devices that were in use<p>When I read the figure of 3000, I ricocheted between being shocked at the large number of people being tracked, then realized that it's actually tiny compared to the US population of 313M, and then back to be being dismayed that it's not so small after doing some back-of-the-envelope calculations.<p>Here's my thinking:<p>The US has 254M registered vehicles (Wikipedia), but cars are shared within families and the average family size is 2.6 (US census). If we further assume that a subject is tracked for about a month, the tracking device gets used on ~10 vehicles per year. Hence, 254000000/3000/2.6/10 = 3256.<p>So your chances of regularly riding in a "bugged" vehicle during the year are 1 in 3256. I have more than 3256 accumulated contacts in my email -- probably you do too.<p>Conclusion: It's very likely that you <i>know someone</i> who's vehicle is being tracked by the FBI <i>this year</i>.
I'm interested in how<p>> a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy in the totality of their movements, even if those movements are in public.<p>translates to actions on the public internet. This has potentially huge ramifications if it were to apply to the web, where the "totality of one's movements" can be much easier to track and perhaps even more revealing than where my car goes.<p>Can the FBI, by this standard, potentially need a search warrant to:<p>1. attempt to create a complete profile of my semi-public internet content (surreptitiously friend me on Facebook, follow my Twitter feed, and monitor all other sites where I am active for recent posts)<p>2. look at the browsing history of a public terminal I regularly use at a library<p>3. capture packets I'm sending over unencrypted WiFi in my home<p>None of these things are very much private nor does any involve any trespass by an investigator--perhaps 3 carries the greatest expectation of privacy by the average technically uninclined citizen. A lawyer could argue, however, that in capturing one or more of them, the FBI approaches capturing nearly all of what somebody does on the internet.<p>I think the Supreme Court has done a very interesting (and perhaps unprecedented?) thing here in creating an expectation of privacy in a <i>public</i> environment by invoking the work <i>totality.</i> With cameras getting smaller, and networks wider, and databases larger, it only seemed inevitable that within a few decades, all of our public movements within urban centres could and likely would be recorded. Similarly, people are already to starting to consider the internet to be "forever," since content never seems to be really "deletable," and Google/Facebook increasingly lower the effort needed to profile somebody's web content. Tell me that in a few decades, our movements on the internet will not be as important as our movements in the physical world, if that isn't already the case.<p>I hope this decision is the seed of a legal philosophy that could impede the continued erosion of privacy-in-public by everyone's smaller chips and bigger hard drives. In my mind, the freedom for people to interact in public without fear of lifelong ramifications is vital to democracy and societal progress although less and less people seem to agree with me. So, maybe this is my desperate optimism talking.
> For instance, he said, agency is now “wrestling” with the legality of whether agents can lift up the lid of a trash can without committing trespass.<p>Um, I thought it was pretty well-established that you <i>cannot</i> do this? Is the FBI just stupid?
That's just so much effort to plant those things. Isn't that what Facebook and specially crafted SMS messages are for?<p>Now they can save money and go up another order of magnitude in the amount they track!<p>Would you be particularly concerned with wasting your time with low-tech lojacking when so many other avenues of surveillance are around the corner? Isn't it better to direct your efforts to be ahead of the curve?
Sounds reasonable and looks like 8-0 ruling<p><a href="http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/10-1259.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/10-1259.pdf</a><p>I wonder what the ruling would be for a case of a search of a trash can that is on the public street: seems it should be allowed without warrant.
police/fbi was caught lying many times before. I dont think stop using GPSes is an option for them. Any idea from a layer standpoint what would happen if they still track a car with GPS and this is proven? can someone be liable or is it just going to be a slap on the wrist, some one-page document saying "kindly please stop because you were told to by supreme court" ?
what kind of law works against FBI?
If they hadn't made this judgment, would there be anything stopping you or I from legally attaching GPS devices to government official's cars and recording their movements?<p>They should overturn the ruling and make it fair game for anyone to track anyone else. Then we can make google maps mashups for tracking each other and government officials.<p>--edit--
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