Today the Third Circuit handed down United States v. Katzin, an important cases on three related issues of Fourth Amendment law: first, whether the installation of a GPS device requires a warrant; second, the scope of the Davis good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule; and third, who has standing to suppress the evidence from the […]
Archive | GPS Surveillance
Responding to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on Probable Cause and Standing to Challenge GPS Searches
By Orin Kerr on February 3, 2013 4:38 pm in Fourth Amendment, GPS Surveillance, Mosaic Theory of the Fourth Amendment
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has asked for amici help in two pending cases about the Fourth Amendment and GPS surveillance: In these cases involving co-defendants, the issue presented, among others, is whether an affidavit demonstrated sufficient probable cause in support of an application for a warrant secretly to attach a GPS device to a […]
Looking into the Record of United States v. Skinner, the Sixth Circuit Phone Location Case
By Orin Kerr on August 17, 2012 2:53 am in Cell-Site Information, Fourth Amendment, GPS Surveillance
I recently blogged about United States v. Skinner, the new Sixth Circuit decision concluding that the Fourth Amendment does not protect location information obtained from a cell phone. Skinner has been getting a lot of attention in the blogosphere, in part because the facts are so vague, so decided to take a closer look at […]
More Cases on the Mosaic Theory and The Implications of Jones
The various opinions in United States v. Jones (aka the GPS case) raise tons of fascinating new questions for Fourth Amendment law. I explore some of those issues in a forthcoming article, The Mosaic Theory of the Fourth Amendment, which will appear in the Michigan Law Review and which I hope to post an early […]
Are Historical Cell-Site Data Protected Under the Fourth Amendment After United States v. Jones?
No, concludes Judge Bennett in United States v. Graham (District of Maryland, March 1, 2012). Judge Bennett concludes that historical cell-site records are not protected because they fall under the third-party doctrine: Like the bank records at issue in [United States v.] Miller, the historical cell site location records in this case are not the […]
Does Fourth Amendment Standing Work Differently for Jones Trespass Searches, Traditional Katz Searches, and Long-term Katz Searches?
Over the last forty years, the Supreme Court has worked out a series of principles for when a defendant has standing to object to the Fourth Amendment search of someone else’s property. According to the those cases, the key issue is whether the government violated the defendant’s own reasonable expectation of privacy under the framework […]
Jones, the Automobile Exception, and the Warrant Requirement
FoxNews.com reports that legal experts are divided on whether United States v. Jones requires a warrant to install a GPS device: Most media reports of the Supreme Court’s decision said the court was requiring police to obtain warrants for attaching GPS devices. But several experts argued that the court had not in fact ruled that […]
Why United States v. Jones is Subject to So Many Different Interpretations
If anything is clear from the Supreme Court’s decision last week in United States v. Jones, it’s that not very much is clear from the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Jones. Reading over the commentary on Jones both in the print media and on blogs, I think I’ve seen just about every reaction […]
NPR’s “On the Media” on United States v. Jones
I was interviewed recently by Bob Garfield of NPR’s “On the Media” about the Supreme Court’s opinions in the Jones GPS case. The 6-minute interview has been posted here.
What Makes an Expectation of Privacy “Reasonable”? A Response to Chief Justice Roberts
During the oral argument a few weeks ago in United States v. Jones, Chief Justice Roberts had some very interesting questions about the Fourth Amendment’s “reasonable expectation of privacy” test. I fear that the Chief Justice’s questions may reflect a common misunderstanding of the test. In this post, I wanted to explain the Chief’s possible […]
The Two Questions of Jones, and the Potential Difficulty of Identifying the Proper Voting Rule
The Justices of the Supreme Court will meet soon to offer preliminary votes in United States v. Jones, the GPS case. We don’t know what the voting alignment will look like: The votes are hard to predict. But it seems to me that there’s a substantial chance that the Court’s opinions might face a puzzling […]
Reflections on the Oral Argument in United States v. Jones, the GPS Fourth Amendment Case
I was at the Supreme Court this morning for the oral argument in United States v. Jones, the GPS case. In this post, I want to blog my reactions to the argument: I’m going to update the post as I go, so general readers can get the important stuff first at the top and then […]
Panel on United States v. Jones, the Fourth Amendment GPS Case
A few weeks ago, I participated on a panel about United States v. Jones, the GPS case, at William & Mary Law School. The panel featured Steve Leckar, who will be arguing the case for Jones; Melanie Wilson, a criminal procedure professor at the University of Kansas (visiting at W&M); and Paul Marcus of W&M. […]
My View of the Second Question Presented in United States v. Jones, the Fourth Amendment GPS Case
This is my second post on United States v. Jones, the case on GPS and the Fourth Amendment. In this post, I want to explore whether the act of installing the device should count a Fourth Amendment search or seizure. My bottom-line is that I find this a surprisingly difficult and open question: Justices wishing […]
My View of the First Question Presented in United States v. Jones, the Fourth Amendment GPS Case
On November 8th, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in United States v. Jones, the case on whether installation and/or use of a GPS device on a suspect’s car to record the public places the car travels is a Fourth Amendment search or seizure. I wanted to offer my thoughts on the case. At […]