{"id":233,"date":"2013-06-09T07:33:06","date_gmt":"2013-06-09T11:33:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/cyberlawclinic\/?p=233"},"modified":"2013-06-10T11:26:31","modified_gmt":"2013-06-10T15:26:31","slug":"massachusetts-sjc-holds-warrant-required-for-prolonged-government-location-tracking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cyberlawclinicold\/2013\/06\/09\/massachusetts-sjc-holds-warrant-required-for-prolonged-government-location-tracking\/","title":{"rendered":"Massachusetts SJC Holds Warrant Required for Prolonged Government Location Tracking"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Cyberlaw Clinic is pleased to report that the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court issued its\u00a0decision<\/a>\u00a0this week in\u00a0Commonwealth v. Rousseau<\/em>, a case about whether an individual may challenge a warrant for GPS tracking of a car in which he is a passenger.\u00a0 We filed an\u00a0amicus<\/em>\u00a0brief (pdf<\/a>) in the case on behalf of the\u00a0Electronic Frontier Foundation<\/a>, arguing that a defendant does have such standing.\u00a0 The decision mirrors the reasoning advocated in the Clinic’s brief, as the SJC held that a defendant \u201chas standing because he had a reasonable expectation that his movements would not be subjected to extended electronic surveillance by the government through use of GPS monitoring.”\u00a0 Crucially, this holding means that law enforcement officers in Massachusetts must obtain a warrant prior to prolonged location tracking.\"\"<\/p>\n

EFF’s\u00a0blog post<\/a>\u00a0about the decision nicely explains the issues before the SJC and describes the posture of the case:<\/p>\n

\n

Police obtained a search warrant to install a GPS device on a car owned by a man suspected in a number of arsons throughout the state and tracked him while he drove the car with his friend and frequent passenger, Rousseau, for over 30 days. After being arrested and charged, both the owner and passenger Rousseau sought to challenge the GPS evidence, arguing that due to misrepresentations in the warrant application, the warrant was invalid. The trial court agreed the misrepresentations made the warrant invalid, but upheld the surveillance anyway, finding that neither the driver or the passenger had a reasonable expectation of privacy in their movements and that for the driver, the physical installation of the GPS device didn’t trigger state or federal constitutional scrutiny.<\/p>\n

After the trial court’s decision in 2007, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in 2009 in\u00a0Commonwealth v. Connolly<\/a>\u00a0that the physical installation of a GPS device was a “seizure” under\u00a0Article 14 of the Massachusetts constitution<\/a>\u00a0that required a search warrant. Then in 2012, the U.S. Supreme ruled in\u00a0United States v. Jones<\/a>\u00a0that the physical installation of a GPS device was a “search” under the\u00a0Fourth Amendment<\/a>\u00a0that required a search warrant. These decisions meant the driver had standing to challenge the installation of the GPS device on his car. But what about the passenger, Rousseau? Since he didn’t own the truck, these decisions didn’t determine whether he had a right of privacy in his public movements. That was the issue confronting the Massachusetts high court.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Concurring opinions in the Jones<\/em> case (written by Justices Alito and Sotomayor on behalf of a total of five justices) noted that people have reasonable expectations of privacy in their public movements, meaning warrants are required before police can engage in prolonged location surveillance.\u00a0 The SJC’s adoption of that reasoning represents an important step in striking a balance between the government’s interest in investigating crimes and citizens’ privacy interests in an era of increasingly high-tech surveillance tools.<\/p>\n

Kit Walsh\u00a0of the Cyberlaw Clinic worked on the brief along with fall 2012 Clinic students James Ren and Matt McCullough.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Cyberlaw Clinic is pleased to report that the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court issued its\u00a0decision\u00a0this week in\u00a0Commonwealth v. Rousseau, a case about whether an individual may challenge a warrant for GPS tracking of a car in which he is a passenger.\u00a0 We filed an\u00a0amicus\u00a0brief (pdf) in the case on behalf of the\u00a0Electronic Frontier Foundation, arguing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2147,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cyberlawclinicold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cyberlawclinicold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cyberlawclinicold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cyberlawclinicold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2147"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cyberlawclinicold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cyberlawclinicold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":239,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cyberlawclinicold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233\/revisions\/239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cyberlawclinicold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cyberlawclinicold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cyberlawclinicold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}