GPS and the Diminishing Privacy Rights

There was a time when the police had to get a court order to search a house or wiretap our phone calls. Unfortunately, the last U.S. administration made huge strides in diminishing our privacy rights. Now the courts are struggling to figure out whether it is acceptable to allow the police to track suspects without a court order. I am a big fan of GPS technologies and have been following them for years. But it’s disappointing to see courts around the nation allow warrant-less GPS tracking without even being slightly troubled.

The courts’ decision to allow warrant-less GPS tracking reminds me how we justified warrant-less wiretapping a few years ago. Unfortunately, it seems we all will have to accept the goods with the bads when it comes to new technologies. If you’ve got nothing to hide, you probably won’t mind being tracked. But the sense of losing privacy can be very tough to handle.

Your take: should the government be allowed to GPS track people without a warrant?