Court Opinion

ID: 9784054
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 20:36:41.189444+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:35:47.916898
License: Public Domain

Rose, J.,
with whom Young, J., agrees,
dissenting:
The protection against unreasonable searches and seizures is a *328fundamental principle to prevent intrusion by the government into the most personal or private areas of a citizen’s life without first establishing probable cause for, and the extent of, the intrusion. Our forefathers believed so strongly in this protection that the prohibition against governmental searches and seizures appears not only in the United States Constitution, but also in the state constitutions of each state.1 The issue in this case presents one of those few situations where the federal analysis falls short in protecting citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures. This court should hold that placing an electronic monitor on a vehicle that permits the continuing surveillance of the vehicle is a search under the Nevada Constitution.
When interpreting a constitutional protection that appears in both the United States and Nevada Constitutions, we will usually defer to and follow the interpretations of the federal courts. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has held that placing an electronic monitor on a vehicle is not a search and seizure under the established law that focuses on a citizen’s expectation of privacy.2 The majority follows this traditional analysis. However, we are entitled to construe our Nevada Constitution to give more protection when the federal interpretation falls short in fully recognizing the right or remedy given to our citizens.3
If we focus only on a person’s expectation of privacy for his bumper or auto frame and the place where the monitor is placed, I believe we are missing the real impact of the intrusion on a person’s privacy. The automobile’s use is a necessity in most parts of Nevada, and placing a monitor on an individual’s vehicle effectively tracks that person’s every movement just as if the person had it on his or her person. I consider this a substantial invasion of an individual’s privacy and, in effect, a continuing monitoring or effective continuing search of an individual.
In State v. Campbell,4 the Oregon Supreme Court recognized that the use of an automobile monitor by law enforcement is an invasion of a citizen’s fundamental right to privacy, and declared that it constitutes an illegal search under the Oregon Constitution’s prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures. The court first explained that under its state constitution, the protection “is not the privacy that one reasonably expects but the privacy to which one has a right,”5 Based on this, the court framed the issue as “whether the practice, if engaged in wholly *329at the discretion of the government, will significantly impair ‘the people’s’ freedom from scrutiny, for the protection of that freedom is the principle that underlies the prohibition on ‘unreasonable searches’ ” set forth under the Oregon Constitution.6 The court observed that if the government’s position were correct:
[N]o movement, no location and no conversation in a “public place” would in any measure be secure from the prying of the government. There would in addition be no ready means for individuals to ascertain when they were being scrutinized and when they were not. That is nothing short of a staggering limitation upon personal freedom.7
The court then held:
We hold that the use of the radio transmitter to locate defendant’s automobile was a search under Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution. Because the police did not have a warrant to use the transmitter, and because no exigency obviated the need to obtain a warrant, use of the transmitter violated defendant’s rights under Article I, section 9.8
The fact that few cases have followed this reasoning does not make the Oregon Supreme Court’s analysis invalid. I consider the federal court’s analysis too categorical and myopic. Oregon’s approach recognizes a new form of technology as a hi-tech search that significantly invades a person’s privacy without any judicial safeguard.
To best understand the extent of this intrusion, we should consider what the majority is now permitting law enforcement to do without any oversight whatsoever. The police will be able to place a vehicle monitor on any vehicle, for any reason, and leave it there for as long as they want. There will be no requirement that the monitor be used only when probable cause — or even a reasonable suspicion — is shown, and there will be no time limit on how long the monitor will remain.
I am sure that the vehicle monitor will be used by the police in many cases when there is probable cause to suspect illegal activity and for only as long as is absolutely necessary. But I fear that in some instances, the monitor will be used to continually monitor individuals only because law enforcement considers them “dirty.” In the future, innocent citizens, and perhaps elected officials or even a police officer’s girlfriend or boyfriend, will have their whereabouts continually monitored simply because someone in law enforcement decided to take such action. This gives too much authority to law enforcement and permits the police to use *330the vehicle monitor without any showing of necessity and without a limit on the duration of the personal intrusion.
For these reasons, I respectfully dissent.

 See, e.g., Nev. Const. art. 1, § 18.

 U.S. v. McIver, 186 F.3d 1119, 1126-27 (9th Cir. 1999).

 See Michigan v. Long, 463 U.S. 1032, 1041 (1983).

 759 P.2d 1040, 1049 (Or. 1988).

 Id. at 1044.

 Id. at 1048.

. at 1049.

 Id.