A resident of Santa Clara, California discovered by accident that the FBI planted a tracking device on his car
Afifi said the strange series of events began Sunday, when he took his car in for an oil change to a garage not far from his Santa Clara home. As the car was raised, Afifi said he noticed “a wire hanging out.” Then he noticed “a black, glimmering device.”
Mazher Khan, owner of Ali’s Auto Care, had no idea what it was but he agreed to yank it out. Afifi left with the device and drove home.
On Tuesday, Afifi said he had just gotten home from work when one of his roommates came in and said, “There are two suspicious people standing right by your car in the complex.”
It is a strange story to begin with, but then it gets even more strange when the FBI show up and request that the big black devices of wires-and-magnets be returned to them.
“All right, where’s the device you found under your hood,” the agent said, according to Afifi. “He goes, ‘Yeah, we put it there.’ “
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“I gave it back to them and said, ‘Is this what you needed?’ ” Afifi said. “He goes, ‘Yeah, this is it.’ “
Ali’s Auto Care now can update their ads to include “Tracking Device Removal”, or maybe even offer an Internet coupon. Note that Divorcenet.com suggests GPS tracking devices could be a wider problem than just with law enforcement.
The use of GPS systems is increasingly being used to monitor cheating spouses. The falling price and shrinking size of GPS systems have spouses from all walks of life keeping track of their “better” halves. Spouses can now use a GPS device to follow a vehicle, and presumably the cheater, behind the wheel. The GPS system’s software works seamlessly with online map services such as Google Maps. Thereafter, the suspecting spouse can sit back and wait for that “gotcha” moment.
Spouses are said to legally be entitled to track their “own” vehicles. The question becomes one of ownership, and then privacy.
The legality of secretly planting a GPS system is a very fact-sensitive analysis. Like checking a spouse’s email, the legality of secretly planting a GPS tracker depends on who owns the vehicle. In a purely technical sense, if you own the vehicle or have joint ownership of it, then it is perfectly legal to use a GPS system to monitor it. Spouses can legally access their spouse’s email in scenarios where there is a jointly-owned computer or a computer that is used by the entire family. The key issue in the planting of a GPS system is whether the spouse who was tracked had a reasonable expectation of privacy. The question apparently has yet to be raised in a divorce case in New Jersey. The law is normally five years behind technological developments.
I am not a lawyer but the “reasonable expectation of privacy” test seems a bit weak. The courts have already ruled in the US that there should be no expectation of privacy in your driveway from the government, for example.
Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn’t violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway — and no reasonable expectation that the government isn’t tracking your movements.
Another opportunity for the security market. Someone should start selling Fourth Amendment tents for the driveway — now even you can set up a reasonable expectation of privacy on your own property.
