Your Driveway is not Private Property
puremagic
Posts: 1,907
The Government's New Right to Track Your Every Move With GPS
By ADAM COHEN Adam Cohen – 1 hr 33 mins ago
Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn't violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway - and no reasonable expectation that the government isn't tracking your movements.
That is the bizarre - and scary - rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants - with no need for a search warrant. (Read about one man's efforts to escape the surveillance state.)
It is a dangerous decision - one that, as the dissenting judges warned, could turn America into the sort of totalitarian state imagined by George Orwell. It is particularly offensive because the judges added insult to injury with some shocking class bias: the little personal privacy that still exists, the court suggested, should belong mainly to the rich.
This case began in 2007, when Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents decided to monitor Juan Pineda-Moreno, an Oregon resident who they suspected was growing marijuana. They snuck onto his property in the middle of the night and found his Jeep in his driveway, a few feet from his trailer home. Then they attached a GPS tracking device to the vehicle's underside.
After Pineda-Moreno challenged the DEA's actions, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled in January that it was all perfectly legal. More disturbingly, a larger group of judges on the circuit, who were subsequently asked to reconsider the ruling, decided this month to let it stand. (Pineda-Moreno has pleaded guilty conditionally to conspiracy to manufacture marijuana and manufacturing marijuana while appealing the denial of his motion to suppress evidence obtained with the help of GPS.)
In fact, the government violated Pineda-Moreno's privacy rights in two different ways. For starters, the invasion of his driveway was wrong. The courts have long held that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their homes and in the "curtilage," a fancy legal term for the area around the home. The government's intrusion on property just a few feet away was clearly in this zone of privacy.
The judges veered into offensiveness when they explained why Pineda-Moreno's driveway was not private. It was open to strangers, they said, such as delivery people and neighborhood children, who could wander across it uninvited. (See the misadventures of the CIA.)
Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, who dissented from this month's decision refusing to reconsider the case, pointed out whose homes are not open to strangers: rich people's. The court's ruling, he said, means that people who protect their homes with electric gates, fences and security booths have a large protected zone of privacy around their homes. People who cannot afford such barriers have to put up with the government sneaking around at night.
Judge Kozinski is a leading conservative, appointed by President Ronald Reagan, but in his dissent he came across as a raging liberal. "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." The judges in the majority, he charged, were guilty of "cultural elitism."
The court went on to make a second terrible decision about privacy: that once a GPS device has been planted, the government is free to use it to track people without getting a warrant. There is a major battle under way in the federal and state courts over this issue, and the stakes are high. After all, 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.
Fortunately, other courts are coming to a different conclusion from the Ninth Circuit's - including the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. That court ruled, also this month, that tracking for an extended period of time with GPS is an invasion of privacy that requires a warrant. The issue is likely to end up in the Supreme Court.
In these highly partisan times, GPS monitoring is a subject that has both conservatives and liberals worried. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit's pro-privacy ruling was unanimous - decided by judges appointed by Presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
Plenty of liberals have objected to this kind of spying, but it is the conservative Chief Judge Kozinski who has done so most passionately. "1984 may have come a bit later than predicted, but it's here at last," he lamented in his dissent. And invoking Orwell's totalitarian dystopia where privacy is essentially nonexistent, he warned: "Some day, soon, we may wake up and find we're living in Oceania."
By ADAM COHEN Adam Cohen – 1 hr 33 mins ago
Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn't violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway - and no reasonable expectation that the government isn't tracking your movements.
That is the bizarre - and scary - rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants - with no need for a search warrant. (Read about one man's efforts to escape the surveillance state.)
It is a dangerous decision - one that, as the dissenting judges warned, could turn America into the sort of totalitarian state imagined by George Orwell. It is particularly offensive because the judges added insult to injury with some shocking class bias: the little personal privacy that still exists, the court suggested, should belong mainly to the rich.
This case began in 2007, when Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents decided to monitor Juan Pineda-Moreno, an Oregon resident who they suspected was growing marijuana. They snuck onto his property in the middle of the night and found his Jeep in his driveway, a few feet from his trailer home. Then they attached a GPS tracking device to the vehicle's underside.
After Pineda-Moreno challenged the DEA's actions, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled in January that it was all perfectly legal. More disturbingly, a larger group of judges on the circuit, who were subsequently asked to reconsider the ruling, decided this month to let it stand. (Pineda-Moreno has pleaded guilty conditionally to conspiracy to manufacture marijuana and manufacturing marijuana while appealing the denial of his motion to suppress evidence obtained with the help of GPS.)
In fact, the government violated Pineda-Moreno's privacy rights in two different ways. For starters, the invasion of his driveway was wrong. The courts have long held that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their homes and in the "curtilage," a fancy legal term for the area around the home. The government's intrusion on property just a few feet away was clearly in this zone of privacy.
The judges veered into offensiveness when they explained why Pineda-Moreno's driveway was not private. It was open to strangers, they said, such as delivery people and neighborhood children, who could wander across it uninvited. (See the misadventures of the CIA.)
Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, who dissented from this month's decision refusing to reconsider the case, pointed out whose homes are not open to strangers: rich people's. The court's ruling, he said, means that people who protect their homes with electric gates, fences and security booths have a large protected zone of privacy around their homes. People who cannot afford such barriers have to put up with the government sneaking around at night.
Judge Kozinski is a leading conservative, appointed by President Ronald Reagan, but in his dissent he came across as a raging liberal. "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." The judges in the majority, he charged, were guilty of "cultural elitism."
The court went on to make a second terrible decision about privacy: that once a GPS device has been planted, the government is free to use it to track people without getting a warrant. There is a major battle under way in the federal and state courts over this issue, and the stakes are high. After all, 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.
Fortunately, other courts are coming to a different conclusion from the Ninth Circuit's - including the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. That court ruled, also this month, that tracking for an extended period of time with GPS is an invasion of privacy that requires a warrant. The issue is likely to end up in the Supreme Court.
In these highly partisan times, GPS monitoring is a subject that has both conservatives and liberals worried. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit's pro-privacy ruling was unanimous - decided by judges appointed by Presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
Plenty of liberals have objected to this kind of spying, but it is the conservative Chief Judge Kozinski who has done so most passionately. "1984 may have come a bit later than predicted, but it's here at last," he lamented in his dissent. And invoking Orwell's totalitarian dystopia where privacy is essentially nonexistent, he warned: "Some day, soon, we may wake up and find we're living in Oceania."
SIN EATERS--We take the moral excrement we find in this equation and we bury it down deep inside of us so that the rest of our case can stay pure. That is the job. We are morally indefensible and absolutely necessary.
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Anyway, the chance of having some G-men bug my car is pretty slim. However, my Chevy and every other GM product in the last 5-plus years has On-Star installed in the factory. With On-Star, my vehicle can have the power disabled remotely if On-Star saw fit. They can probably listen to me while driving . . . although they would just hear me singing off-key to Johnny Guitar.
I thought of that too...
Do we know for sure that this guy's driveway was indeed his property? They refer to it as his property a couple of times, but then reference "curtilage" and that he lived in a trailer. I just keep picturing in my head a trailer park where you lease the space, and don't really have "private property" besides your actual trailer.
But if it is his actual property, and they went on it and the court is ok with it, then it's mind-boggling.
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln
What should disturb everyone is that our government is requiring more and more transparency of us, our private lives and property, while constantly demanding more secrecy for itself. It's supposed to be the other way around.
2. Many people have GPS, but you have it to help yourself and family, not persecute yourself, but that’s not the point. If your driveway is not considered private property, what’s to prevent say an angry girlfriend, boyfriend, wife, husband, etc., from bugging your vehicle?
3. Even as a renter, a person should be entitled to the same rights afforded the homeowner, unless, the homeowner approves a warrant.
To me, if a person is responsible for paying property taxes, whether that driveway has a sign specifically designating it as private property, it is by local, State and Federal tax laws your private property and as such a ‘warrant’ should be required by law enforcement. In some cases, local ordinances prevent homeowners from fencing their driveways.
4. Isn’t your vehicle considered private property regardless of where it is parked?
One would think... I know it's tinfoil hat stuff, but by this court's logic, someone could stick some sort of locator on your clothes to track you without a warrant.
I'm thinking about this more and more, but is your vehicle's location something that gets protected as private? Authorities could follow you everywhere you drive without a warrant, right?
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln
It is your fourth amendment right to be secure in your person. I would say that doing what you say here is illegal without a warrant.
But, I should warn the poor officer assigned to stake out my goings on... I will bore him/her to the point where he/she will swallow his/her gun.
Hail, Hail!!!
can't see it holding at the supreme court level.
to be sure, we shouldn't count on them, people should be a lot more pissed off about this.
R.i.p. My Dad - May 28, 2007
R.i.p. Black Tail (cat) - Sept. 20, 2008
no no im sorry but no way should a landlord have more rights than the actual tenant when it comes to this kind of thing. i dont want anyone over ruling my right to privacy purely because i rent, especially some jerkwad on a powertrip or someone harassed into timidity.
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
...are those who've helped us.
Right 'round the corner could be bigger than ourselves.
If a warrant is issued for the search of all properties owned by puremagic and you, catefrances happen to be a renter in one of those homes, that property is allowed to be searched, even if you are not advised that such a warrant was issued.
Ok People Read this carefully, --‘they suspected he was growing marijuana”.
Now, because they couldn’t prove it, they decided to put a GPS tracking device on his vehicle while it was parked in his driveway. They didn’t care whether they had any ‘probable cause’ because they didn’t even try to get a warrant. The Ninth Circuit Court ruled that this was ok, stating that a driveway is not considered private property, thus, his Fourth Amendment right to privacy was not violated and the evidence collected by law enforcement stood.
Ok People ---What about a person’s FIFTH Amendment right against self-incrimination. Law enforcement used the GPS to ALLOW the SUSPECT to GATHER EVIDENCE against HIMSELF.
as the tenant i should be advised such a warrant was issued. thats just fucking common courtesy imo.
you know like some official rocks up and says were sorry for the inconvenience but for reasons we cant disclose due to an ongoing investigation your rented premises needs to be searched. id be cool with that. but the tenant must have rights enough to at least be advised. thats all im saying.
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
Just to play devil's advocate....
What exactly is being searched? What is the difference between this and putting surveillance on someone 24/7?
I'm not sure I understand the question-- but for surveillance by the state, that should require a warrant as well. Why constantly watch someone without reasonable suspicion that they are breaking the law? Surveillance isn't necessarily as physically invasive as being patted down, having your stuff rummaged through, or even just having someone waltz onto YOUR PROPERTY without your permission to plant something on your car-- but it doesn't make it right to constantly watch someone either, unless again there is cause. We have the right to privacy as guaranteed by the fourth amendment.
I don't have so much of a problem with the car being tracked (like you said, it's no different than surveillance), but I guess my hangup is that they apparently went on his property and attached something to his car without a warrant or without him knowing.
I have an EZPASS transmitter in my car... if the cops had a way of completely tracking my car with that (not just toll records), the it's not as big of a deal to me (still too big brother for me thought). I knowingly put that transmitter in my car.
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln
"For every tool they lend us, a loss of independence."
Fuckin EZ Pass... I talk so much shit about wanting to get rid of it, but have yet to do it!
I think I more was addressing the ... "or Starbucks" part of your response, not necessarily your driveway. I'm not sure why you brought up "having your stuff rummaged through" though.
There is no right to privacy guaranteed by the fourth amendment, I think you might want to go reread that. And the police certainly don't need a warrant to follow someone around, they never have.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
To me, this addresses privacy. Is the word used? No, but it is certainly implied that we are to be left alone unless a warrant is issued over probable cause.
As far as the Starbucks part of my explanation, if it's MY CAR anywhere, what right does the government have to put a bug on it for no warranted reason? I don't see how they can do so legally. Just because they do, doesn't mean it's right or legal. The act of bugging someone's car is making someone insecure in their "effects." I mentioned "rummaging through stuff" because yes, that is more intrusive than surveillance, just describing the difference between say, camera surveillance and actively searching someone's things. But still, neither are permitted unless there is reason to believe the person in question is potentially guilty of a very specific wrongdoing.
Does this violate our privacy? I guess I would be more concerned if it turned out the government was planning on tracking all cars. However, if this is a successful method for helping catch suspected criminals then I would have to agree with it.
Would opinions change on this case if the suspect was making meth? Would it be acceptable to let the suspect go free due to a technicality?
you know what you do??? you whack a fence around your property thus making everything INSIDE the fence your private property. thats how we do it here. think about it.
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say