Busted! Two New Fed GPS Trackers Found on SUV

Well this is fun... another unconstitutional behavior of the cops being busted.

Busted! Two New Fed GPS Trackers Found on SUV

As the Supreme Court gets ready to hear oral arguments in a case Tuesday that could determine if authorities can track U.S. citizens with GPS vehicle trackers without a warrant, a young man in California has come forward to Wired to reveal that he found not one but two different devices on his vehicle recently.

Then things got really weird when police showed up during a Wired interview with the man.

The young man, who asked to be identified only as Greg, is one among an increasing number of U.S. citizens who are finding themselves tracked with the high-tech devices.

The Justice Department has said that law enforcement agents employ GPS as a crime-fighting tool with “great frequency,” and GPS retailers have told Wired that they’ve sold thousands of the devices to the feds.

But little is known about how or how often law enforcement agents use them. And without a clear ruling requiring agents to obtain a “probable cause” warrant to use the devices, it leaves citizens who may have only a distant connection to a crime or no connection at all vulnerable to the whimsy of agents who are fishing for a case.

Afifi believed he was being tracked by authorities for six months before a mechanic discovered the device on his car when he took it into a garage for an oil change. He apparently came under surveillance after the FBI received a vague tip from someone who said Afifi might be a threat to national security. Afifi has filed a suit against the government, asserting that authorities violated his civil liberties by placing the device on his vehicle without a warrant and without suspicion of a crime. His attorney, Zahra Billoo, told Wired this week that she’s requested a stay in her client’s case, pending a ruling by the Supreme Court in the GPS tracking case now before it.

The Obama administration will be defending the warrantless use of such trackers in front of the Supreme Court on Tuesday morning.

Of course Obama will be defending this.

The Supreme Court ruling will be very important... I won't hold my breath for a constitutional ruling...

Well, these things are for sale to anyone, and run about $200 or less. So maybe we should be placing them on the law enforcement/governments vehicles so we know where they are and what they are doing. You can also setup a website so you can track movements in real time. I used to do this for a former employers fleet.

Dang! That just gave me an idea for a movie plot! A group of men decide to rob a bank. They case the town, and plant GPS tracking devices on all police cars. They enable web tracking, and while the heist is in progress, the driver tracks the police and notifies the others when they are within two minutes of reaching them allowing a clean getaway. They would know where any roadblocks were and be able to elude them, making a clean getaway!

place one on one of their cruisers and see how well they enjoy it.

reason: to make sure they earned your tax dollars that you sweated all week to make and not sitting at a donut shop.

reply to post by Vitchilo


If they want to track you they can "welcome to onstar"

reply to post by haarvik


Man, great plot and it would work awesome as well. They would be able to turn or park in a driveway real quick until a patrol unit passes. You should get right on that before some one else here does. I was in law enforcement in another life and that would or could have cost lives if it was involving the right kind of case and the wrong kind of...well, I'll leave the rest to you!

I know find one and attach it to a migrating bird and then watch them scramble to follow the signal as it leaves and enters the US.

reply to post by Vitchilo


Weren't they also demanding he return the devices to them?

I think that is "abandoned property" and he should be able to destroy it or throw it away. It would have been more fun to just move it to someone else's car though. I think if I found one, I'd just toss it up under a city bus, or an ex-girlfriend!

reply to post by spirit_horse


Yeah I should.
Would make for a great movie. It would apply to all sorts of scenarios if you think about it.