There is little doubt that technology is fast becoming intertwined with our jobs, our social life, and even our most private interactions with each other. This phenomenon creates friction among many compelling interests. The first is a clash between two contrasting values: the desire for privacy and the longing to be connected through the newest and most advanced technology. To a certain extent, as one advances, the other must necessarily recede. Meanwhile, courts are tasked with determining the balance between government's law enforcement needs and the people's privacy. The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides the measuring stick to determine this balance. The amendment ensures "[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated." Its primary function is to prohibit government intrusion upon the privacy and property rights of the people. When new technology is involved, achieving this balance is not an easy undertaking. United States v. Jones presented such a challenge to the Supreme Court. The question posed was whether the installation and month-long monitoring of a GPS device attached to Jones's car constituted a violation of the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against "unreasonable searches and seizures." This usage of the Global Positioning System (GPS) is not unusual in criminal investigations, but up to that point longer-term monitoring had not been directly tested by the Court. Thus, many observers awaited the Jones ruling for its potential impact not only on government monitoring programs, but also on general Fourth Amendment cases involving prolonged government surveillance. In prior government tracking cases, the Court applied the test from Katz v. United States , which addresses whether the individual had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the area to be searched. Because the police in Jones physically invaded his property to attach the GPS device—whereas in the previous cases they had not—the Court declined to apply Katz , but instead based its decision on a trespass theory. The trespass theory asks whether there was a physical intrusion onto a constitutionally protected area coupled with an attempt to obtain information. In Jones , there was, so the Court applied this more limited test and held that a search occurred. Though the majority bypassed the Katz approach, Justice Alito, concurring with Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, and Kagan, would have applied Kat z . Long-term surveillance, Justice Alito wrote, violated Jones's reasonable expectation of privacy under Katz . Justice Sotomayor agreed with both the majority and Alito's concurrence, but called for additional protection by questioning the viability of the third-party doctrine, which holds that any information voluntarily given to a third party loses all privacy protections. This report will analyze all three opinions in an attempt to determine how Jones might affect future use of GPS tracking and other government surveillance techniques. First, it will briefly recount the facts that led to Jones's prosecution, his appeal, and the Supreme Court's review. Next, it will analyze the majority's property-based test, evaluating it against similar Fourth Amendment case law. Additionally, this section will raise issues concerning the possible impact of this approach on similar search and seizure cases. Next, the report will examine both Justice Alito's and Justice Sotomayor's concurrences and their potential impact on cases involving technology. Because the Court did not express whether a warrant is required, the report will posit several theories on how this issue may be resolved in the future. In 2004, a Joint Task Force of the FBI and the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department suspected Antoine Jones was part of a drug distribution ring. Based on information obtained from wiretaps, a pen register, and video surveillance, the task force obtained a warrant to monitor Jones's Jeep with a GPS tracking device. According to the terms of the warrant, the officers had 10 days to install it and were required to do it in the District of Columbia. The officers installed the device on the 11 th day in Maryland while the Jeep was parked in a public parking lot. For the next four weeks the device tracked Jones's every movement, creating 2,000 pages of monitoring data. During this time, the device tracked Jones's movements to and from a known stash house. Jones was indicted for conspiracy to distribute and possession with intent to distribute cocaine. At trial, the prosecution relied heavily on Jones's movements derived from the GPS to connect him with a larger drug ring. He moved to dismiss this information as a warrantless search under the Fourth Amendment. The United States District Court for the District of Columbia excluded the data derived when his car was parked in his garage but allowed into evidence all of his public movements. Jones was ultimately convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed, holding that the GPS data were derived in violation of Jones's reasonable expectation of privacy under the Fourth Amendment. The Supreme Court then granted a writ of certiorari, agreeing to review Jones's case. Most observers assumed the Supreme Court would, like the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, apply the reasonable expectation of privacy test developed in Katz v. United States to determine if the tracking was a Fourth Amendment search. Under the Katz test, a search in the constitutional sense has occurred if the individual had an actual expectation of privacy in the area to be searched that society would deem reasonable. Since 1967, when Katz was handed down, the Court had developed a body of case law applying this privacy-based formulation of the Fourth Amendment. The Jones majority, led by Justice Scalia, took a different route. It held that the attachment of the GPS device, coupled with its use to monitor Jones's movements, was a constitutional search. The Fourth Amendment ensures that "[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated." Because Jones's vehicle is an effect —listed in the text of the Fourth Amendment—the police's physical intrusion by attaching the GPS for tracking purposes constituted a search . This theory hinges on common law trespass as it was known in 1791 (when the Fourth Amendment was adopted). It does not rely on Katz , nor any subjective conception of privacy. The majority contended that Jones's rights should not strictly depend on whether his reasonably expected zone of privacy was pierced. Rather, the majority asserted, property rights also define an individual's right to be free from government intrusion. Justice Alito, in concurrence, contended that the majority's reliance on "18 th -century tort law" which "might have provided grounds in 1791 for a suit based on trespass to chattels," "strains the language of the Fourth Amendment; it has little if any support in current Fourth Amendment case law; and it is highly artificial." Justice Alito would have instead applied the Katz formulation. This criticism prompts two central questions: (1) Does the majority's property-based approach enjoy textual, historical, or jurisprudential support? ; and (2) What effect will this approach have on other areas of government investigations? The seeds for the property-based approach were planted in England in Entick v. Carrington , a case considered by many as an ancestor of the Fourth Amendment. There, the English court forbade government agents from searching through Entick's home, looking for papers intended to prove his seditious writing. The agents had a general warrant to search the home, but the warrant lacked a specific description of the area to be searched and the items to be seized. Lord Camden declared that no government agent nor any other person may enter the property of another without permission, even if no harm is done. This theory carried over to the colonies and prompted the framers to include a prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures when drafting the Bill of Rights. Under this common law trespass approach, the key inquiry is not necessarily the content of the information obtained by the police, but rather their method of retrieving it. The Jones Court had no doubts that the attachment of the GPS device (which required a trespass of Jones's car) would have been a search when the Fourth Amendment was adopted—when Entick was fresh in the framers' minds. Although property certainly controlled Fourth Amendment thinking during the infancy of the Fourth Amendment, its control waned in later years. Olmstead v. United States provides an example. There, federal agents installed several wiretaps on the telephone wires coming from Olmstead's house. In upholding this electronic eavesdropping, the Court ruled that the Fourth Amendment applied only when there was an official search or seizure of a person, his tangible papers and effects, and an "actual physical invasion" of the individual's home. Because the installation of the wiretap did not require the agents to trespass onto Olmstead's property, the Court held that it was not a search or seizure under the Fourth Amendment. Forty years later, the Court began its shift away from this property-centric approach. In Warden v. Hayden , the Court noted the property-based approach had been discredited over the years, and that privacy should be the focus of the inquiry under the Fourth Amendment. Subsequently, the Court decided K atz v. United States , where it held an electronic surveillance of Katz's conversations while he was in a public telephone booth was impermissible, despite the fact that no property rights were involved. The "Fourth Amendment protects people, not places," the Court declared, and any search that invaded a person's "reasonable expectation of privacy" should be considered a search in the constitutional sense. This seemingly conflicting line of cases left many wondering whether property and privacy could coexist under the Fourth Amendment. The Court attempted to reconcile these two lines in Soldal v. County of Cook . There, while under the supervision of local police, a landlord had his tenant's trailer home towed from the rented lot. The tenant sued the police under Section 1983, a civil rights statute, for a violation of his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable seizure.