Man Finds Two GPS Trackers on His SUV

November 9th, 2011

Via: Wired:

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.

The 25-year-old resident of San Jose, California, says he found the first one about three weeks ago on his Volvo SUV while visiting his mother in Modesto, about 80 miles northeast of San Jose. After contacting Wired and allowing a photographer to snap pictures of the 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 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.

3 Responses to “Man Finds Two GPS Trackers on His SUV”

  1. Zenc says:

    If nothing else, I suppose he just got about $1000.00 worth of free hardware, courtesy of law enforcement.

    But on a more serious note, if there’s no expectation of privacy for a private citizen in a privately owned vehicle on a public road, then how much less so for a public employee in a public vehicle on a public road?

    They want to bug our cars, we’ve got a reciprocal right to bug theirs.

  2. This is going to sound pretty arcane, but the act of getting a tag on your car turns it into a government vehicle. And, of course, you have to have a license to operate a government vehicle.

    http://www.rodclass.com/Home.html

  3. pessimistic optimist says:

    this just seems medieval relative to whats available. i just dont understand the compartmentalization or tiers in modern law enforcement and drug trafficking surveillance agencies. seems like this would be a last ditch effort by incompetent idiots to keep track of a zero threat target. why do these people even get payed? oh i forget, there are armies of volunteer church groups and neighborhood societies and quilting groups and moral-value committees that make this cost effective.

    for the party, comrade!

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