The Supreme Court prohibits the minor use of GPS tracking devices for vehicles to follow the movements of the citizens

Richmond, VA -In a unanimous decision, the US Supreme Court today decided that the police may not use the GPS tracking devices of the citizens' cars first.
“If this often divided Supreme Court come together and can agree on such an important decision to protect individual privacy, this is reason to celebrate,” said Kent Willis, managing director of the ACLU of Virginia.
“Advances in technologies that enter individual privacy constantly testing the constitution,” added Willis. “We not only need the Supreme Court to reaffirm the importance of the fourth change, but also the state legislators should go forward in order to create laws to protect and not to take data protection rights.
The decision is unconstitutional on the face of HB 807, a legislative template in the Virginia General Assembly, which prevents most private parties from placing GPS devices for other people's vehicles, but the police expressly enable the police to use such devices without arrest.
The judgment, US v. Jones, also clarifies a muddy case of Virginia, Commonwealth against Foltz, which challenged the rights of the Fairfax County police to pursue a suspect that uses a secretly placed GPS tracking device on his car without first receiving an arrest warrant. Virginia's ACLU submitted a letter in Foltz and argued that the police had violated the fourth amendment rights, the same conclusion to which the Supreme Court of the United States came today.
In Foltz, however, Virginia's Court of Appeal decided that the police could use the device without violating the suspect's constitutional rights. Later, in an EN -Banc decision, the same court decided that the contested evidence did not arise directly from the use of the GPS device and had cleared the previous decision. As a result, the courts in Virginia became an important national question in relation to data protection rights without a say.
“The message in the Jones case will go far beyond this specific judgment,” said Willis. “This is the Supreme Court, which says loudly and clearly that the technologies for the inclusion of data protection do not close between the cracks in the fourth amendment.
The national ACLU and the ACLU of the capital of the nation have submitted an amicus letter in Jones, which can be found online at: http://www.aclu.org/files/10-1259_bsac_civil_liberties_union.pdf. The ACLU of Virginia Amicus in Foltz can be found online at: https://www.acluva.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/foltz-amicus-va-ctoungenatchals.pdf.

Contact: Kent Willis, managing director, 804-644-8022