In January 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court took its first trip into addressing the modern era of technology-driven crime-fighting when it decided United States v. Jones.1 Although the court ruled 9-0 in favor of suppressing the information police acquired as a result of 28 consecutive days of uninterrupted and warrantless GPS tracking of defendant's car, three separate decisions were written covering a broad spectrum of privacy issues.
What made the breadth of these three decisions particularly ironic is that this same court not only passed on an opportunity to dip its collective toe into similar waters just 19 months earlier in City of Ontario v. Quon,2 but it also noted that in future cases it would only enter the fray very cautiously:3
The judiciary risks error by elaborating too fully on the Fourth Amendment implications of emerging technology before its role in society has become clear…[r]apid changes in the dynamics of communication and information transmission are evident not just in the technology itself but in what society accepts as proper behavior.
