Orwellian
The Obama administration is urging the Supreme Court to allow the government, without a court warrant, to affix GPS devices on suspects’ vehicles to track their every move.
After all, a person has no reasonable expectation of privacy unless they’re getting an abortion.
In other news, I’m going to start marketing a line of GPS device locators.
April 20th, 2011 at 11:35 am
The supreme court can now “allow” stuff? New one on me. Jack.
April 20th, 2011 at 11:35 am
Nice thought on the locator. Wish I could think of a way to do that.
April 20th, 2011 at 11:36 am
I think that post is all the marketing you’ll need. I’ll take two.
April 20th, 2011 at 11:46 am
A kid that found one on his car and pulled it got a lovely visit from the feds requesting their device back. I’da stuck it to a railcar on a freight train and told them to go find it if they show up.
Alternatively, a GPS tracker would make a great episode of “Will It Blend?”
April 20th, 2011 at 11:54 am
“Nice thought on the locator. Wish I could think of a way to do that.”
Getting the locations for satellites or cell towers is passive, but for these trackers to be any good they need to phone home…or have the feds come back and pick them up to download the data pack.
I think this is a good argument for changing your own oil. Get under your car and have a look to see if anything is amiss.
If you find one, attach it to an 18 wheeler or a U-Haul, and let them chase “you” around the countryside.
April 20th, 2011 at 11:59 am
Better yet stick it on a boat. Let those fucks noodle that one for awhile.
April 20th, 2011 at 12:03 pm
Apparently Apple has been storing location data for all iPhone and iPad users.
http://petewarden.github.com/iPhoneTracker/
I can’t think of any legit reason why they should store 6+months of where my phone has been.
April 20th, 2011 at 12:04 pm
Any kind of radio receiver that follows the standard superheterodyne design can be detected. I’m not an expert in this area, but I would suspect GPS receivers operate this way. Basically you get some reverse leakage from the local oscillator that feeds into the antenna and transmits a weak signal that could be picked up in the general vicinity of the receiver.
Though, now you can do GPS on a chip, pretty much, and I have no idea how much those local oscillators leak. Because of the move to integrated receivers, my bet would be it’s much harder to detect a receiver now than it used to be. But theoretically, you could build something to do this.
April 20th, 2011 at 12:44 pm
“Yes We Can!”
April 20th, 2011 at 12:46 pm
“After all, a person has no reasonable expectation of privacy unless they’re getting an abortion.”
Or having a gay cootie injection, or discussing actions against Republicans.
If the right to privacy that Justice Blackmun created over lunch with his clerks, why doesn’t it apply to my guns or my income or my car?
April 20th, 2011 at 12:53 pm
They definitely used to have radar detector detectors so it could probably be done.
Abortion and pervy sex are the only things where you can expect privacy. I remember some years ago a Kokomo IN city functionary got arrested for doing nasty things with another guy in a public park bathroom stall. They were not convicted because the judge ruled there was a reasonable expectation of privacy because the stalls had doors. The city removed the doors from all the park bathroom stalls because of that.
April 20th, 2011 at 12:53 pm
That’s a good one! I know from experience trying to track ELT’s that the rails will pick up the signal and extend it beyond it’s normal range – but only along the rail bed. If you don’t notice the tracks running under that overpass you’re driving along, it can have you focusing on the completely wrong area.
April 20th, 2011 at 12:59 pm
Easier method is to just jam the GPS. GPS signals are extremely weak given your distance from the transmitter, losses from the atmosphere, and overall they are very easy to drown out in noise.
If you want to go one step further you can just make a micro transmitter for your car that will simulate you being in China. Currently you can get GPS testing units but they cost a couple grand.
As long as you keep the power way down as not to affect those around you, you should be relatively safe from backlash. If you pump enough power to disrupt GPS for 100s of yards, you’re going to be in deep !@#$.
April 20th, 2011 at 1:22 pm
And this is supposedly a “liberal” administration….NOT if liberal has anything to do with liberty. It’s definitely a leftist administration as in fascist or communist. And this just a continuation of the police-state apparatus of the last administration, that is no CHANGE–and MORE!
April 20th, 2011 at 1:24 pm
Addendum: There should now be a market for GPS device detectors.
April 20th, 2011 at 1:31 pm
Local oscillator leakage can be hard to stomp, especially with the short waves they’re using. Even if it’s a “receiver on a chip” I bet you could pick it up, unless they designed specifically to suppress it. I’m pretty sure jammers are illegal already, though it would be fun to, say, drive to Hawaii.
April 20th, 2011 at 1:35 pm
Easier method is to just jam the GPS
Probably a crime to do so.
April 20th, 2011 at 1:52 pm
Just in time for their printouts to be delivered.
http://www.truthistreason.net/us-govt-printing-office-needs-350934-national-detainee-handbooks-printed-by-april-29th-2011
April 20th, 2011 at 1:53 pm
How is this not a HIPPA violation? If they can see that I’ve been to a doctor or dentist, should be an automatic fail. Likewise visits to church, an attorney.
Probably the best way to beat this would be to say “The government wants the authority to track who visits abortion clinics.”
April 20th, 2011 at 1:59 pm
Barron: Jamming is illegal (has been forever, basically). You can’t jam GPS, cell phones, radio, or any damn thing intentionally in the US – the FCC will have your head on a pike, and quite reasonably.
dusty: No, there’s no protection for the fact of having driven to a medical facility, a church, or a lawyer’s office.
Any details about your health are protected, and any information exchanged with the lawyer under a client privilege, are.
April 20th, 2011 at 2:20 pm
A nonlinear junction detector would find one just fine. Also a cigarette plug GPS jammer is freely available for purchase on many websites.
April 20th, 2011 at 2:27 pm
“They definitely used to have radar detector detectors so it could probably be done.”
I had a Radar Detector that was also a Radar Detector Detector Detector. If it sniffed a detection device it would flash a readout to let me know the device had just gone dark and it would periodically sniff before going active again.
Prohibition just leads to a technology war.
April 20th, 2011 at 3:12 pm
As an aside, is anyone else becoming worried about our overdependence on fragile and easily disrupted technologies like GPS?
Crashing our infrastructure has never been easier.
April 20th, 2011 at 3:59 pm
The even sadder news is that removing a locator device found on your car would probably result in an obstruction of justice charge.
April 20th, 2011 at 4:31 pm
Fuck it. It’s time to shoot the bastards.
April 20th, 2011 at 5:42 pm
So if it is ruled legal and they do not need a warrant does that mean I can beat the living shit out of them if I catch them vandalizing my vehicle???
April 20th, 2011 at 7:41 pm
Better yet, if you find one, leave it in place, get one of those Postal “If it fits, it ships” boxes, mark it “Return to Sender” with the nearest FBI Office’s Street Address on the Sender Part, and drive to the nearest Post Office. Quickly remove it and put it in a Drive Up Mail Box, then take off. I’m sure the local Postal Workers would just LOVE it when they are told by the FBI to “OPEN THAT MAIL BOX NOW!” And if you get hauled in, you can tell the Judge that that you were “just returning Lost Government Property via an Official Government Agency”.
April 20th, 2011 at 9:15 pm
If you find one, just throw it in a public trash receptacle. They may have a law that says it’s ok if they place one, but do they have a law yet that says it’s not ok for you to remove it? Even if they do, can they prove it was you that did so? I suspect they’re gonna have to eat a lot of these tracking devices. Unfortunately, we’re the ones paying for them.
April 20th, 2011 at 9:40 pm
You looking for investors? 🙂
April 20th, 2011 at 11:43 pm
It gets worse than GPS trackers. Michigan cops scanning people’s cellphones during traffic stops:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/news/should-cops-be-alowed-to-scan-your-phone-during-a-traffic-stop-5587825
(That’s from PopMech, not some Ron Paul conspiracy circlejerk site)
And, Apple products are for teenage girls and fanboys. If they track their users, the users deserve it. I might be an asshole (thx again for that clarification, Linoge, LOL) but I am not an Apple user.
April 21st, 2011 at 12:54 pm
The GPS tracker photographed for the Cali. story is not electronically detectable. It doesn’t transmit a signal. It passively records GPS data. Has to be retrieved and data downloaded. It is large due to batteries. Since it is under a car’s body and chassis it needs a strong receiver.
If you do find one mail it to the chairman of the Congressional committee that oversees the FBI budget.
Better, mail it to a Supreme Court judge and ask if they’d return it to the FBI.
April 21st, 2011 at 3:57 pm
“dusty: No, there’s no protection for the fact of having driven to a medical facility, a church, or a lawyer’s office. Any details about your health are protected, and any information exchanged with the lawyer under a client privilege, are.”
I know what the law is. I also know that democratic voters THINK their right to drive to an abortion doctor without anybody knowing is constitutionally protected. I know that the Congressional Democrats will leap to protect that right with new law.
April 21st, 2011 at 6:16 pm
Oh please oh please oh pretty please put one on my truck Mr. FBI Man!! The thought of sticking that thing to a train, and them trying to figure out where it’s gone is going to make me giggle all day tomorrow. 😀