|
Police use gps tracking { May 12 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/121572_gps12.htmlhttp://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/121572_gps12.html
Monday, May 12, 2003
Court will decide if police need warrant for GPS 'tracking'
By KATHY GEORGE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
William Bradley Jackson worried that he hadn't properly concealed his victim's shallow grave. So he snuck away one quiet fall day to finish the job, unaware that sheriff's deputies had secretly attached a satellite tracking device to his truck.
Police trickery triumphed over his treachery.
Jackson Spokane County sheriff's investigators used the hidden device to retrace Jackson's path to the gravesite, where they found crucial evidence that would lead to his murder conviction in 2000.
But what if the same secret technology, called global positioning satellite tracking, could track anyone at any time?
The Washington Supreme Court will decide soon whether police agencies throughout the state may use the device freely -- without a warrant. The Jackson case is the first in the state dealing with the issue.
"Do we really want the ability to track everybody all the time, without any suspicion, or without probable cause?" asked Doug Klunder, a Seattle attorney who wrote an amicus brief, or friend of the court, in the case on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington. "How close are we to Big Brother?"
Many law enforcement agencies, including the King County Sheriff's Office and King County Prosecutor's Office, believe no warrant is needed for the tracking devices.
That's because they simply record electronically what anyone could see by following a vehicle on the public streets.
"We'd be shocked if the court said otherwise," said King County sheriff's spokesman Kevin Fagerstrom.
In Jackson's case, the state Court of Appeals in Spokane agreed no warrant was needed.
The court's opinion last year said, "A law officer could legally follow Mr. Jackson's vehicles on public thoroughfares .... The GPS devices made Mr. Jackson's vehicles visible or identifiable as though the officers had merely cleaned his license plates, or unobtrusively marked his vehicles and made them plain to see."
Critics of the Spokane court's opinion say there's a big difference between following someone's real-time movements and recording them for computer analysis later. "There's just something that feels more underhanded about it," said Klunder.
It's not just government abuse the ACLU fears. Stalkers could use GPS to find their victims, and jealous husbands could use it to spy on their wives. "If the police can do it without a warrant, then presumably a private citizen can, too," Klunder said.
But then there's Jackson's victim -- his 9-year-old daughter, Valiree. In a way, she is the poster child for secret tracking technology.
The girl with curly red hair was buried in a remote, hilly forest off an unmarked logging road. If not for the device on her father's truck, deputies may never have found her remains.
And the shocking truth -- that Jackson killed his daughter as she slept in her bed in the family's Spokane Valley home -- might never have been known.
Jackson tried hard to mislead police, court records say. The morning of Valiree's murder on Oct. 18, 1999, he called 911 and reported her missing. He went around the neighborhood, calling her name and asking if anyone had seen her. Then he took his feigned search to her elementary school.
Deputies, aided by police dogs and 44 citizen volunteers, scoured dozens of nearby homes. But their suspicions quickly turned to Jackson, court records say.
Investigators found blood on Valiree's pillow and sheet. They found her diary, which said her father wouldn't leave her alone in her room. And they learned of a possible motive -- that he wanted his daughter out of the way so he could marry his girlfriend.
Deputies impounded Jackson's 1995 Ford pickup and his 1985 Honda Accord shortly after the girl's disappearance. They attached the GPS devices to the vehicles and returned them.
The GPS recordings showed that, about three weeks after the murder, he drove to his daughter's remote burial spot and stayed for 44 minutes.
A few days later he stopped for 16 minutes at another place, where police later found two plastic bags with duct tape containing Valiree's blood and hair.
Jackson's guilt is no longer at issue. The sole question in the Supreme Court hearing May 20 is whether GPS tracking should require a warrant.
The privacy rights of Washington citizens are at stake, said Lisa Daugaard of the Seattle-King County Public Defender Association.
Following the Spokane court's reasoning, she said, "There is no constitutional barrier to the police secretly inserting a tracking device into a suspect's clothes or even his body, because for the most part, people move around from place to place in 'plain view.' "
Neither the King County Sheriff's Department nor the Seattle Police Department has used GPS tracking much.
Last fall, a GPS device helped sheriff's deputies find the remains of Ken Leopold, a Snohomish County man whose death remains a mystery, Fagerstrom said.
The device was attached to a dog as it searched for and eventually recovered the man's bones.
Cynthia Caldwell, assistant Seattle police chief, said the narcotics unit used GPS only once in the past three years, "and we did get a warrant."
Police got a warrant for GPS in Jackson's case, too.
Jackson tried to reverse his murder conviction by arguing that deputies didn't have probable cause for that warrant, but the appeals court said no probable cause was required.
If the Supreme Court agrees no warrant is needed for GPS, "this would be an unprecedented extension of governmental power to monitor citizens' whereabouts and behavior," Daugaard said.
Said Klunder of the American Civil Liberties Union: "Really, we get to the possibility of a police state."
SURVEILLANCE DEBATE
WHAT: Should a warrant be required to secretly track someone's movements with a global positioning satellite device?
WHO: The Washington Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case, which pits police and prosecutors against civil liberties advocates and public defenders.
WHEN: 9 a.m., Tuesday, May 20.
WHERE: Temple of Justice, 415 12th St. W., Olympia.
|
|
