AT&T Tech Support 360
January 12, 2005 11:00 AM PST
Snooping by satellite
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Police suspected the lawyer of ties to a local Hells Angels Motorcycle Club that was selling methamphetamine, and they feared undercover officers would not be able to infiltrate the notoriously tight-knit group, which has hazing rituals that involve criminal activities. So investigators stuck a GPS, or Global Positioning System, bug on Moran's car, watched his movements, and arrested him on drug charges a month later.
A federal judge in New York ruled last week that police did not need court authorization when tracking Moran from afar. "Law enforcement personnel could have conducted a visual surveillance of the vehicle as it traveled on the public highways," U.S. District Judge David Hurd wrote. "Moran had no expectation of privacy in the whereabouts of his vehicle on a public roadway."
What's new:
Police agencies are making inroads in using GPS technology to track suspects--without getting court approval first.
Bottom line:
As more courts side with police over privacy, critics say GPS can reveal too much and should require strict judicial oversight.
Last week's court decision is the latest to grapple with the slippery subject of how to reconcile traditional notions of privacy and autonomy with increasingly powerful surveillance technology. Once relegated, because of their cost, to the realm of what spy agencies could afford, GPS tracking devices now are readily available to jealous spouses, private investigators and local police departments for just a few hundred dollars.
Not all uses are controversial. Trucking outfits use GPS boxes to keep track of their drivers' locations, and companies sell software to dispatchers that instantly calculates which taxi is closest to a customer. OnStar uses GPS tracking to provide roadside assistance to owners of many General Motors vehicles.
What's raising eyebrows, though, is the increasingly popular law enforcement practice of secretly tagging Americans' vehicles without adhering to the procedural safeguards and judicial oversight that protect the privacy of homes and telephone conversations from police abuses.
"I think they should get court orders," said Lee Tien, staff counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "We're in a world where more and more of our activities can be viewed in public and, perhaps more importantly, be correlated and linked together."
GPS devices work by listening for radio signals from satellites and calculating how long the signals take to arrive.
The result of that calculation provides a highly accurate estimation of latitude and longitude. Depending on the type of GPS tracker, that information is beamed back to an eavesdropper's computer through the cellular network or quietly recorded and divulged when the device is retrieved a few days or weeks later.
Voluntarily agreeing to automotive GPS tracking can be a bargain for some consumers. Progressive Casualty Insurance began a pilot project
See more CNET content tagged:
GPS,
police,
privacy,
vehicle,
satellite
- Thomas Jefferson
From Max Hedroom, episode 6.
Blanks 5/5/87. The "Blanks" are the invisible people, the ones who don't appear on any computer records. Simon Peller, newly elected city official, is doing his best to put them all in prison and the Blanks, in return, are doing their best to wreck the entire computer network, which doesn't exactly endear them to the now-TV-less general public.
Here: www.epic.org/privacy/terrorism/usapatriot
They don't even have to tell you if they go into your house and take things, anymore, or serve you with a search warrant.
People have been warning you about your vanishing privacy for decades.
Those like James Bovard wrote rather eye-opening books like "Shakedown: How the Government Screws You from A to Z" and "Lost Rights : The Destruction of American Liberty". Robert Ellis Smith wrote another good one called "Our Vanishing Privacy : And What you Can Do to Protect Yours".
Yet there's idiots who willingly give out their Social Security Numbers here in the US to practically everybody, even stores, just to get discounts on their products.
Guess they don't realize that you can't change your SSN, and it can be used to get credit cards in your name and services like utlities. Once that number gets out, you're screwed for life! Want to see how easy it is to get this information? Go to an information broker. LOL Cnet itself did a segment on them once with Richard Hart.
Haven't been to the library lately? How about the music store?
Try one of Jello Biafra's 'spoken word' albums. You'll hear about all kinds of things you'll never hear the mainstream news media tell you about.
As for the Bill of Rights, itself; I don't think that any of them have survived intact, and several of them, if taken in the spirit that Thomas Jefferson intended would be deemed illegal now.
This may give you a clue: www.cyberwolfman.com/quotes.htm
Even the 13th Amendment (the one regarding slavery) is only good for toilet paper, now. They allow groups to promote slavery in chat programs all over the Internet. Don't believe me? Try looking for things in them like gor and gorean. They've virtually taken over the 3D chat programs, too.
Don't bother complaining to the FBI about slavery, though. Many of us already have, and with no results, or replies to our letters. Don't think they care as long as it's not in the mainstream news media. If it's not, it might as well not exist.
Can't wait until you guys find out about the roboflies... The stuff in the sci-fi books like Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age" are being created in the labs right now.
But I've already got my own little 'eye on the world' (www.cyberwolfman.com/vidfeeds.jpg).
stop the civil war!!
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by 412krishna
June 14, 2008 8:23 PM PDT
- Snooping goes on in this country, because snooping is being allowed. There should be a regulation on satellite surveillance, so that individuals are not victimized by satellites. Satellites can not only be used in gps systems in this country, but a satellite can be used to do human thought monitoring and neurophone harassment. There is no justification for harassment in this country.
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See all 21 Comments >>A good website to check on this is surveillanceissues.com