Court Opinion

ID: 9492371
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:39:48.58526+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:16.502049
License: Public Domain

KLEINFELD, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I join in all of the majority opinion except for part 11(B). That section holds *1133that installing tracking devices on the chassis of the automobile did not constitute a seizure subject to Fourth Amendment analysis. I think installing tracking devices on automobiles and airplanes is subject to Fourth Amendment analysis as a seizure. Nevertheless error in failing to suppress on this ground was harmless. The evidence was overwhelming, and Mclver was so successfully tracked visually that the transmissions from the devices attached to his car were superfluous.
The police installed two devices on Mclver’s car as well as an antenna under the bumper cover. The officer who installed one of them testified that installation went “not very well.” He had no prior experience installing this type of equipment. The wrong kinds of batteries were installed, which “actually shorted themselves out.” The second device was apparently installed successfully and worked fine.
Electronic transmitters are installed by police officers on cars, airplanes, boats and other vehicles so that they can track them. The devices emit radio signals. The police use receivers to pick up the signals and identify where they are coming from. Some of the devices emit constant or frequent signals, some occasional signals. They may be combined with global positioning devices.
When a transmitter is installed on or in a vehicle without the owner’s consent there may not be an invasion of any area for which there is a reasonable expectation of privacy, but I think the law requires us to treat the installation as a seizure for Fourth Amendment purposes. Property is seized, for purposes of Fourth Amendment analysis, where there is “some meaningful interference with an individual’s possesso-ry interests. 1 The interest to which seizure analysis is addressed in this case is not a person’s liberty to drive on a public street without a police officer watching, because that liberty is not protected. Rather, it is the possessory interest of the owner of a vehicle in excluding individuals from performing mechanical work on his vehicle or altering it without his consent.
Fourth Amendment analysis was extended from protection of property to protection of privacy, to protect privacy from government intrusion even where the individuals intruded upon lack any property interest in the area where the intrusion was made.2 That the Fourth Amendment does protect privacy even where the protected person has no property, does not imply that where the person does have a property interest, it is not protected from seizure in the absence of a privacy interest. The Supreme Court recently so held, unanimously, in Soldal v. Cook County,3 as we noted in our en banc opinion in Armendariz v. Penman.4 Soldal holds, in the total absence of any privacy interest, that “the Fourth Amendment protects property as well as privacy.”5 Though the Court had previously, in Cardwell v. Lewis,6 upheld a search in which paint was scraped from a murder suspect’s car, Soldal notes that in Cardwell only a four Justice plurality joined in that view, there was probable cause at the time to seize the car, and “both the plurality and dissenting Justices considered the defendant’s auto deserving of Fourth Amendment protection even though privacy interests were not at stake.”7
Thus under Soldal, despite Mclver’s lack of a privacy interest in the chassis of his car, he had a right guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment to be free of a “seizure” of his car unless a search warrant *1134issued upon probable cause or there was a special exigency. Though exigency that avoids the need for a warrant easily arises in automobile search and seizure cases, no finding of exigency has been made, nor has exigency been urged, as a reason to dispense with a search warrant in this case.
Whether installing a transmitter on or in a vehicle is a “seizure” for Fourth Amendment purposes depends on whether the installation involves “some meaningful interference with an individual’s possessory interests.”8 “One of the main rights attaching to property is the right to exclude others.”9 Owners of vehicles assiduously exclude others from touching or altering the mechanical parts of their vehicles without consent.
American cities are cacophonous with the noise of car alarms, because people arrange to be alerted if anyone touches their cars. They do not like strangers touching their cars. Nor is their concern necessarily misplaced. A police officer not trained as a mechanic might unwittingly damage an automobile in the course of installing a transmitter. In the ease at bar, the police officer who installed one of the devices testified that because of an error regarding batteries, the batteries some time after installation “shorted themselves out.” Shorts emit heat, a serious safety concern near a gasoline tank.
Now that automobile operation depends heavily on electronic signals between components and computers, owners would naturally be concerned lest radio transmitters and magnets might affect safety and proper operation of the vehicles. Cosmetic damage from scratches as the devices are installed and removed and adhesives might affect resale value. With airplanes and boats, the safety concerns of owners are likely to be magnified. Anyone who boards an airplane is told to turn off all Walkmans, CD players, and other devices upon takeoff and landing because they may emit radio signals that would interfere with safe operation of the airplane. An owner of a boat or airplane would reasonably be concerned that a police transmitter would do the same thing for the same reason, jeopardizing his and his passengers’ safety. An airplane owner would also be deeply concerned about the safety risk if anyone but a certified aircraft mechanic did anything to his plane.
This is not to say that police officers may not attach transmitters to automobiles. The point of the discussion above is that the owner of a vehicle has a possesso-ry interest that is meaningfully interfered with if a transmitter is installed, even where the installation does not interfere with a reasonable expectation of privacy. That is to say, installing a beeper is a seizure. Many seizures by law enforcement officers are permissible under the Fourth Amendment. Fourth Amendment law is especially tolerant of seizures of vehicles, because they are so easily moved. But it is one thing to justify a seizure, and quite another not to treat substantial interference with possessory interests as a seizure.
In this case, no warrant was obtained to allow the seizure, and no exception such as exigency was urged to avoid the need for a warrant. All that the government has argued is that the transmitter was installed when the car was outside the eurtilege, an argument that disregards the owner’s pos-sessory interest in his car, as opposed to his privacy interest in his eurtilege.
Surprisingly, I have not found much definitive law on this issue. The Supreme Court has spoken on the related issues discussed above, but not on whether installation of a transmitter on or in a vehicle is a seizure for purposes of Fourth Amendment analysis. Three Justices have noted that certiorari might be desirable on “the legality of a warrantless installation of a beeper.”10 We have carefully distin*1135guished in our circuit’s “beeper” cases between the Fourth Amendment interests at stake in monitoring the signals, and those at stake in installation of the devices, and have not reached the question whether installation without consent is a seizure.11 Other circuits are in some disarray, and most or all of the beeper decisions focus exclusively on privacy, having come down before Soldal made it clear that property interests needed to be considered even if privacy interests were negligible.12
Much of the disarray in the law arises from confusion of the privacy interests and the property interests protected by the Fourth Amendment. Although transmitters reduce the privacy of the people who travel without knowing that they are carrying transmitters, the law is clear that this privacy interest is not protected under the Fourth Amendment, where the travel is public.13 If the owner of a car consents to installation of a transmitter in his car, this consensual alteration would probably not turn into a “seizure” for Fourth Amendment purposes if the car were transferred to another.14 United States v. Karo,15 upon which the majority relies, does not involve nonconsensual installation of a transmitter on an automobile, as the ease at bar does. In Karo, the DEA agents, authorized by a court order, installed a transmitter in a can of ether that the government owned at the time, then had their cooperating individual sell the can of ether to the cocaine dealers who would unknowingly transmit their location when they moved the can. The Court held that this did not interfere meaningfully with the cocaine dealers’ possessory interests in the can.16 Karo is analogous to the owner consenting to installation of a beeper on his car, and then selling it with the beeper installed to another.
Law enforcement needs regarding beepers can be adequately served by search warrant procedures, and the broad exceptions to search warrant procedures for easily moveable vehicles. Those are not the only interests deserving of protection. People care about their cars, planes and boats, and often object vehemently to any unconsented to mechanical work or even touching of these valuable effects. That concern is protected by the law of property and by the Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable seizures. In- the absence of a warrant issued by a neutral magistrate, or applicability of an exception to the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement, people are entitled to keep police officers’ hands and tools off their vehicles.

. United States v. Karo, 468 U.S. 705, 712, 104 S.Ct. 3296, 82 L.Ed.2d 530 (1984).

. Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967).

. Soldal v. Cook County, 506 U.S. 56, 113 S.Ct. 538, 121 L.Ed.2d 450 (1992).

. Armendariz v. Penman, 75 F.3d 1311, 1320 (9th Cir.1996) (enbanc).

. Soldal, 506 U.S. at 62, 113 S.Ct. 538.

. Cardwell v. Lewis, 417 U.S. 583, 94 S.Ct. 2464, 41 L.Ed.2d 325 (1974).

. Soldal, 506 U.S. at 65, 113 S.Ct. 538.

. Karo, 468 U.S. at 712, 104 S.Ct 3296.

. Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128, 143 n. 12, 99 S.Ct. 421, 58 L.Ed.2d 387 (1978).

. Michael v. United States, 454 U.S. 950, 102 S.Ct. 489, 70 L.Ed.2d 257 (1981) (dissent from denial of petition for certiorari).

. United States v. Brock, 667 F.2d 1311, 1318-22 (9th Cir.1982); United States v. Miroyan, 577 F.2d 489, 492 (9th Cir.1978).

. See United States v. Michael, 645 F.2d 252 (5th Cir.1981) (en banc); United States v. Bailey, 628 F.2d 938 (6th Cir.1980); United States v. Moore, 562 F.2d 106 (1st Cir.1977); United States v. Holmes, 537 F.2d 227 (5th Cir.1976) (en banc).

. United States v. Knotts, 460 U.S. 276, 103 S.Ct. 1081, 75 L.Ed.2d 55 (1983).

. United States v. Karo, 468 U.S. 705, 712, 104 S.Ct 3296, 82 L.Ed.2d 530 (1984).

. Id.

. Id. at 712-13, 104 S.Ct. 3296.