Reuters Via Yahoo Reports: The Supreme Court for the first time ruled on Monday that police attachment of a GPS device to monitor a suspect’s vehicle was a search protected by constitutional privacy rights, a test case involving new surveillance technology.
The high court’s ruling was a defeat for the Obama administration, which defended the use of global positioning system devices without a warrant and without a person’s knowledge as a legal way to monitor a vehicle on public streets.
The justices upheld a precedent-setting ruling by an appeals court that the police must first obtain a warrant to use a GPS device for an extended period of time to covertly follow a suspect.
The high court unanimously held the government’s placement of the GPS device to a vehicle and using the device to monitor the vehicle’s movement was covered by U.S. constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures of evidence
