9th. Circuit GPS tracking/privacy case

The 9th. Circuit Court of Appeals, last January, ruled that law enforcement officers could secretly place GPS devices on a person's car without seeking a warrant from a judge. A request for a full-court, en banc, rehearing was denied last Thursday.

"Drug Enforcement Administration agents in Oregon in 2007 surreptitiously attached a GPS unit to the silver Jeep owned by Juan Pineda-Moreno, whom they suspected of growing marijuana, according to court papers,” a CNN article this morning said. "When Pineda-Moreno was arrested and charged, one piece of evidence was the GPS data, including the longitude and latitude of where the Jeep was driven, and how long it stayed. Prosecutors asserted the Jeep had been driven several times to remote rural locations where agents discovered marijuana being grown, court documents show."

Pineda-Moreno pleaded guilty to conspiracy to grow marijuana, and is serving a 51-month sentence, but appealed on the grounds that sneaking onto a person's driveway and secretly tracking their car violates a person's reasonable expectation of privacy.

The Court, in January, said, "Insofar as [Pineda-Moreno's] complaint appears to be simply that scientific devices such as the [tracking devices] enabled the police to be more effective in detecting crime, it simply has no constitutional foundation. We have never equated police efficiency with unconstitutionality and decline to do so now." ( Holding )

The request for an en banc rehearing was denied without comment, but there were five dissenting judges opposed to that denial.

"The ruling likely won't be the end of the matter," CNN’s article predicts. "A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., arrived at a different conclusion in similar case, saying officers who attached a GPS to the car of a suspected drug dealer should have sought a warrant." ( See U.S.v. Maynard, D.C. Cir., Aug. 6, 2010)