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U.S. Court Rules That Government Can Secretly Track
You With GPS, Privacy is For Rich People Only
TIME report details legal ruling that befits
activity of KGB or the East German Stasi
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 A
Report
in TIME magazine details how it is now perfectly
legal in nine states for the government to attach secret satellite
tracking devices to your car and monitor you wherever you go,
without a search warrant.
As if that wasn't bad enough, the report also details how The
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which made the
ruling, essentially suggests that privacy should be reserved
for rich people only.
The law, which now applies in California and eight other Western
states, stems from a case beginning in 2007 when federal agents
of the DEA covertly attached a GPS tracking device to the vehicle
of an Oregon man they suspected of growing marijuana.
The vehicle was parked in the man's driveway, yet judges ruled
that he did not have any reasonable expectation of privacy under
the Fourth Amendment because they driveway was "open to
strangers" such as delivery people and neighborhood children.
This ruling transgresses long standing court rules that the
area immediately surrounding a private property, known as the
"curtilage," should also be considered private.
Judges also ruled that there was no reasonable expectation
that the government was not tracking the man's movements.
All appeals against the court's motion have failed.
One Ninth Circuit judge has spoken out against the ruling however,
noting that it essentially suggests that privacy is limited
to those who can afford to completely close off their property
with hi-tech security features such as electric gates, fences
and security booths to stop anyone, including the government,
sneaking around.
Chief Judge Alex Kozinski raised the point and added that "cultural
elitism" is rife within the justice system:
"There's been much talk about diversity on the bench,
but there's one kind of diversity that doesn't exist,"
he wrote. "No truly poor people are appointed as federal
judges, or as state judges for that matter."
"1984 may have come a bit later than predicted, but it's
here at last," Kozinski added, noting that "Some day,
soon, we may wake up and find we're living in Oceania."
With a Justice Department on record suggesting that the Fourth
Amendment does not apply after 9/11, and an intelligence apparatus
guilty of widespread covert wiretapping of American citizens'
communications, one might suggest that we found ourselves living
in such an Orwellian nightmare a long time ago, now it is simply
being made official.
"...if government agents can track people with secretly
planted GPS devices virtually anytime they want, without having
to go to a court for a warrant, we are one step closer to a
classic police state - with technology taking on the role of
the KGB or the East German Stasi." the TIME reporter and
professional lawyer Adam Cohen writes, noting that due to differing
decisions by courts in other districts, the issue is soon likely
to end up in the Supreme Court.
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Steve Watson is the London based writer
and editor at Alex Jones' Infowars.net, and regular contributor
to Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International
Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham
in England.
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