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GPS Tracking

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If police attach a GPS tracking device to someone's car and use it to track his movements over a substantial period of time, it that a "search" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment?  Yes, said all 9 Justices of the Supreme Court today in United States v. Jones.  The Court split 5-4 on the rationale, though.  Justice Scalia for the majority (with Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Kennedy, Thomas, and Sotomayor) looked to the word "effects" in the Fourth Amendment and the trespass-based approach used before Katz v. United States in 1967.  Justice Alito, joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kagan, reaches the same result with the "reasonable expectation of privacy" rationale that the Court has used, for the most part, since Katz.

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