Has the government attached GPS to your car?

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By Suzanne Choney

Most of us really appreciate the benefits of GPS?? except when it's surreptitiously attached to our vehicle?by the government. And how would you know?

You wouldn't. That's the point, of course: Feds and police agencies investigating bad guys don't want them to know they're being tracked. But what if you're not a bad guy? What if you're just ... you?

Several justices on the U.S. Supreme Court said Tuesday they have reservations about allowing law enforcement to do such monitoring without a warrant. If the federal government wins the case before the Supremes, it would "suddenly produce what sounds like '1984,' " said Justice Stephen Breyer.

Another Supreme Court justice, Elena Kagan, said with GPS being able to track a person's movements 24 hours a day, "that seems too much to me."

The court heard arguments in the case, which is an appeal by the federal government of a lower-court decision that tossed out a drug conspiracy conviction of a Maryland man. In that case, the FBI and local police didn't have a valid search warrant when they put a GPS device on the man's car, the lower court ruled.

Justice Department attorney Michael Dreeben told the high court Tuesday that GPS devices are very helpful especially in the initial stages of an investigation, when GPS can do the monitoring work that might be otherwise be required of a team of officers. And, he argued, GPS is only one of many police tools that don't require a warrant; others include going through a person's trash or following a suspect 24/7.

Cases of surprised citizens finding government GPS units on their car aren't everyday occurrences, but they are happening.

In March, an Egyptian-American college student filed suit against the FBI for secretly putting a GPS tracking device on his car. Yasir Afifi, who said he had and has nothing to hide, said a mechanic doing an oil change on his car found the device between his car's right rear wheel and exhaust.

At a news conference, Afifi said when he asked the FBI about the device, the agency did not give him a clear answer as to why he was being monitored.

"I'm sure I have done nothing wrong to provoke anyone's interest," Afifi said in an Associated Press report, "although he noted that his family is from Egypt, he's a young man and he makes a lot of calls overseas. 'So I'm sure I fit their profile.' "

Perhaps Greg also fits that profile. Wired's Threat Level reports Tuesday that Greg, a "Hispanic American who lives in San Jose at the home of his girlfriend?s parents," who contacted the publication after finding not one, but two hidden GPS devices on his Volvo SVU:

After contacting Wired and allowing a photographer to snap pictures of? (the first) device, it was swapped out and replaced with a second tracking device. A witness also reported seeing a strange man looking beneath the vehicle of the young man?s girlfriend while her car was parked at work, suggesting that a tracking device may have been retrieved from her car.

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

The monitoring, Greg told Wired, "most likely involves a criminal drug investigation centered around his cousin, a Mexican citizen who fled across the border to that country a year ago and may have been involved in the drug trade as a dealer."

And when the Wired reporter "drove down to meet Greg and photograph the second tracker with photographer Snyder, three police cars appeared at the location that had been pre-arranged with Greg, at various points driving directly behind me without making any verbal contact before leaving."

The Supreme Court is expected to rule before June on the issue of whether a warrant is needed for GPS monitoring. Until then, wouldn't hurt to check your car or ask your mechanic to do so. Just in case.

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Source: http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/08/8702995-has-the-government-attached-gps-to-your-car

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