Opinion ID: 1086355
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: gps searches and the warrant

Text: REQUIREMENT The Fourth Amendment mandates that 9 [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, and no Warrant shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. U.S. Const. amend. IV. Prior to 1967, the Supreme Court of the United States interpreted this language generally to mean that the Fourth Amendment prevented the police from physically intruding upon an individual‟s private property for purposes of conducting a search (the physical intrusion theory). See United States v. Jones, 132 S. Ct. 945, 949-50 (2012); see also, e.g., Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928) (upholding the warrantless wiretapping of a target‟s telephone lines primarily because “[t]here was no entry of the houses or offices of the defendants”), overruled in part by Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967).1 A 1 We note that, at times, the Supreme Court has referred to this theory in the language of “trespass” rather than physical intrusion. Compare Jones, 132 S. Ct. at 949-50, with Florida v. Jardines, 133 S. Ct. 1409, 1414 (2013). As the law currently stands, we think the latter term — “physical intrusion” — is the more appropriate. See Jardines, 133 S. Ct. at 1420-21 (Alito, J., dissenting) (criticizing the Supreme Court‟s most recent application of the physical intrusion theory and noting that “trespass law provides no support for the Court‟s holding today”); Silverman v. United States, 365 U.S. 505, 511 (1961) (“[W]e need not pause to consider whether or not there was a technical trespass under the local 10 change came in 1967 with the decision in Katz v. United States, which involved the warrantless wiretapping of a public phone booth. 389 U.S. 347. In Katz, the Court announced that the Fourth Amendment “protects people, not places,” id. at 351, a principle that eventually became embodied in what Justice Harlan termed an individual‟s “reasonable expectation of privacy” (the privacy theory), id. at 360-61 (Harlan, J., concurring). In subsequent years, the privacy theory became the driving force behind Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, while the physical intrusion theory lay dormant. See, e.g., United States v. Santillo, 507 F.2d 629, 632 (3d Cir. 1975) (noting that “the trespassory concepts [in early Fourth Amendment jurisprudence] . . . have since been discredited” (footnotes omitted) (citing Katz, 389 U.S. at 352-53)).
It was in this context that courts began grappling with the constitutionality of using tracking devices. For purposes of our discussion, we begin with the Fifth Circuit‟s 1981 decision in United States v. Michael, 645 F.2d 252 (5th Cir. 1981) (en banc), which considered the warrantless use of a beeper for surveillance of a suspected drug manufacturer. In Michael, the court assumed that installation of the beeper on the exterior of a van constituted a search before holding that the DEA agents‟ conduct was constitutional since they acted based on reasonable suspicion. Id. at 256-59 (holding that defendant had “reduced” privacy expectations in the property law relating to party walls. Inherent Fourth Amendment rights are not inevitably measurable in terms of ancient niceties of tort or real property law.” (footnote omitted)). 11 movement of his automobile and that the use of a beeper was minimally intrusive). A pair of dissenting opinions argued that, among other things, the DEA agents were required to obtain a warrant because they physically intruded upon the defendant‟s property (i.e., his car). See, e.g., id. at 260-70 (Tate, J., dissenting). Two years later, the Supreme Court took up the beeper issue, ultimately holding that concealing a beeper inside of a container that was then loaded onto a target‟s vehicle did not constitute a search, where the beeper‟s placement was accomplished with the container owner‟s consent. United States v. Knotts, 460 U.S. 276, 279-80, 285 (1983). In so doing, the Supreme Court explained that “[a] person traveling in an automobile on public thoroughfares has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements from one place to another.” Id. at 281. Nonetheless, the Court‟s ruling was not unequivocal, with the Majority cautioning that twenty-four hour, “dragnet type law enforcement practices” could implicate “different constitutional principles.” Id. at 283-84. The Supreme Court returned to beepers the following year when it decided United States v. Karo, 468 U.S. 705 (1984), which centered on the DEA‟s use of a beeper to collect information regarding the whereabouts of objects inside a private residence. In Karo, the DEA had once again secreted a beeper inside of a container — also with the container owner‟s consent — and ensured that the container would be loaded into the target‟s vehicle. Id. at 708-09. The agents then used the beeper to track the vehicle to various locations and determined that the beeper-concealing container had been brought inside several residences (something that they could not verify with visual surveillance). Id. at 709-10. In holding that use of the beeper was unconstitutional under 12 those circumstances, the Court explained that, unlike in Knotts — where information was “voluntarily conveyed to anyone who wanted to look” — the information obtained by monitoring the beeper while inside a private residence gave the DEA information “that could not have been visually verified.” Id. at 715 (internal quotation marks omitted). In a partial dissent, Justice Stevens (joined by Justices Brennan and Marshall) argued that placing the beeper inside a container, which was then loaded into the target‟s vehicle, implicated both a “seizure and a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.” Id. at 728 (Stevens, J., dissenting in part). After the beeper-centered decisions in Michael, Knotts, and Karo, technological advances heralded the advent of a new electronic surveillance device: the GPS tracker. One of the first decisions to address the constitutionality of this new technology was United States v. McIver, 186 F.3d 1119 (9th Cir. 1999). In McIver, the Ninth Circuit rejected defendant‟s argument that installing a GPS device (along with a beeper) on the “undercarriage of [the defendant‟s automobile]” constituted a “seizure of the vehicle.” Id. at 1127 (“McIver did not present any evidence that the placement of the magnetized tracking devices deprived him of dominion and control of his [vehicle], nor did he demonstrate that the presence of these objects caused any damage to the electronic components of the vehicle.”). The court also concluded that, because McIver could demonstrate no reasonable expectation of privacy in the exposed undercarriage of his car, the use of the electronic devices did not constitute a search under the Fourth Amendment. Id. at 1126-27. The Seventh Circuit followed suit in 2007, with Judge Posner explaining that attaching a GPS device to a target 13 vehicle did not constitute a search because such a device merely substitutes for “following a car on a public street,” an activity that “is unequivocally not a search within the meaning of the [Fourth Amendment].” United States v. Garcia, 474 F.3d 994, 997 (7th Cir. 2007). However, echoing the Supreme Court‟s concerns in Knotts, the Seventh Circuit warned that it might need to reevaluate its conclusion if faced with a case concerning use of GPS technology for mass surveillance. Id. at 998. Three years later, the Ninth Circuit returned to the topic of GPS tracking, reaffirming its conclusion that attaching a GPS tracker to the undercarriage of a vehicle did not constitute a search. United States v. Pineda-Moreno, 591 F.3d 1212, 1214-15 (9th Cir. 2010). The appellant filed a petition for rehearing en banc, and though the Ninth Circuit denied the petition, Chief Judge Kozinski issued a fiery dissent from the denial, accusing the Pineda-Moreno majority of being “inclined to refuse nothing” to the needs of law enforcement. United States v. Pineda-Moreno, 617 F.3d 1120, 1121 (9th Cir. 2010) (Kozinski, C.J., dissenting). In his