Technology continues to advance, but the law cannot always keep up with it. One of the biggest areas of controversy involves tracking devices, such as Global Positioning System and cell phone locators, to conduct surveillance in criminal investigations. While many courts have given their blessing to these devices, others are troubled and believe that such surveillance violates privacy rights and the Fourth Amendment. Now it appears that the issue may be headed to the U.S. Supreme Court. On April 15, acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal petitioned the Supreme Court for review of U.S. v. Maynard, 615 F.3d 544 (D.C. Cir. 2010), petition sub nom, U.S. v. Jones, No. 1259 (April 15, 2011), a landmark decision striking down the warrantless use of GPS devices to conduct round-the-clock surveillance of suspects’ vehicles.
Almost three decades ago, the Court held in U.S. v. Knotts, 460 U.S. 276 (1983), that the use of a beeper device to track a suspect to his drug lab was not a search. Because the tracking device did no more than follow the suspect’s movements along public thoroughfares, Leroy Knotts had no reasonable expectation of privacy. Law enforcement officers saw the decision as giving a green light to the use of new surveillance technology to follow suspects.
