Spatial Law and Policy: Government’s Use of Tracking Technology: More Than A Constitutional Issue?

Government’s Use of Tracking Technology: More Than A Constitutional Issue?

Kevin Pomfret, Spatial Law and Policy Blog, Friday, March 4, 2011

I have written in the past about a series of recent court cases in the United States involving the Fourth Amendment and a reasonable expectation of privacy from a location standpoint. … From a legal standpoint these cases raise some very difficult and important issues regarding both the Fourth Amendment and the clearly outdated Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). I will not go into the details of either here, other than to say that courts are split in both types of cases as to whether a warrant is required before location data is collected or obtained. However, as equal importance as the legal analysis is that the public position of the Obama administration – through the Department of Justice – in each federal case appears to have been that a warrant is not required. …

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