GPS Tracking ROI

Court rules that sly GPS tracking isn’t unlawful

by Darren Murph, posted Feb 4th 2007 at 6:40PM

It’s one thing to offload (illegally) a dozen or so GPS units from a storage facility and beg the police to nab you by leaving them turned on, but for the boys in blue to slide a tracking device into your ride to keep dibs on your doings, well that’s another matter entirely. Earlier this month, the Seventh Circuit of the US Court of Appeals "ruled against a defendant who claimed that the surreptitious placement of a GPS tracking device amounted to an unconstitutional search," essentially giving the coppers the green light to add a GPS module to a suspicious ride sans a warrant. While we’re sure the privacy advocates out there are screaming bloody murder, the district judge found that they had had a "reasonable suspicion that the defendant was engaged in criminal activity," and it seems that a well-placed hunch is all they need for lawful placement. Interestingly, the government argues that no warrant was needed since "there was no search or seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment," but did add that "wholesale surveillance of the entire population" was to be viewed differently. So while this may come as a shock to some folks out there, it’s not like your vehicles have been entirely devoid of data capturing devices up until now anyway, so here’s fair warning to be on your best behavior when rolling about. There’s more excellent discussion on legalities of GPS Tracking on Engadget.

Often the general news media hue and cry about GPS and privacy issues is so lopsided or ignorant I don’t even bother to read it or post about it.

In general,

• If you own a vehicle you can track it
• If folks work for you, you can track them with their prior consent
• If you’re a parent, you can track your child
• If you carry a cell phone it is subject to tracking, GPS or not

Those four generalization however don’t begin to track the surface of GPS …. I should say  … tracking law.  I am at heart a person who believes that in many ways we already have too many damn laws.  But I can’t deny that in the case of rapidly expanding new technology we need new laws … or significant clarification of old ones.  Let’s take one example from my bullets above.  Parent tracking child.  If, by child, we mean a natural offspring under 18 years of age, although I am not a lawyer, I think you can safely say that you can track that person, with or without their consent, in any of the 50 states.  Whether or not you should track without consent is another story for another day (I think not), but I don’t think one of your own children could successfully bring suit against you for doing so.

What about a stepchild, though, as in the story the article references?  Wanna make a bet?  I sure don’t.  Although in many cases the law would consider your rights the same as a natural parent there are dozens or hundreds of other factors that might enter in.  What does the child’s natural parent think?  How old is the child?  on and on. 

Now let’s say you have some vehicles in your business.  You place tracking devices on them and use the information you gather to help you run your business.  So far I think you’re on safe ground anywhere.  But one day you find some egregious employee misconduct by an individual, you fire him, based on what you "see" him doing via the GPS records.  He files a wrongful termination suit.  Does he have a chance?  Again, something I wouldn’t make a bet on because the law is so silent on this matter it’s like a vacuum.

You give an employee a company-owned laptop.  You take care to insure that there is no GPS device attached to it because you specifically want to avoid the tracking issue.  Now the employee downloads a free software like Loki and sends his location back to the office unintentionally, proving he’s in Fenway watching the Sox when he swore he was going down to Providence that afternoon to see a client without fail.  Can you fire him based on knowing his location without his knowledge, even if he was the person who installed the technology? (I’ve written about this non-GPS location technology here).  Among other things it does this:

Location-Based Search and ‘Virtual GPS’

Loki pinpoints your exact physical location and then uses that location to make the web revolve around you wherever you are. With Loki you’ll always know where you are, make sure that others know where you are too, never get lost and always be able to find stuff nearby.

The law should tell us what we can’t do, and by default then we can do what the law doesn’t speak to us, but we can’t take proper advantage of GPS and wireless technology with today’s deafening silence.  GPS is in the forefront on this issue but there are other common tracking technologies, in particular cell phones (even those without GPS) and wireless IP tracking technology.

Last time in this series we posted some recent examples of GPS jamming.  I wanted to really address the issue but my experience is limited to the practical aspects … I’m not an engineer, let alone a true scientist.  Also, some of my readers don’t care too much for the in-depth articles.

Better, then, that I crib off a man who has taught me tons about GPS, Richard langley … a real scientist, and one with a gift for explaining even deep technical concepts in the way that everyday users can gain valuable insights.  If you aren’t already a reader of GPS World, and Richard’s excellent "Innovations" columns I highly recommend them:

INNOVATION INSIGHTS with Richard Langley

Richard Langley

AS WE ALL KNOW, GPS SIGNALS ARE WEAK. At a receiver’s antenna, in the open air, their strength is about –160 dBW or 1 × 10^-16 watts. Compare this to a cell-phone signal, which might be –60 dBW or 1 × 10^-6 watts — 10 billion times stronger! While code correlation in the receiver lifts the GPS signals above the background noise floor, the signals are still relatively fragile, and building walls and other obstructions can significantly attenuate the received signal power so that they cannot be tracked by a conventional receiver.

It is the ratio of the signal power to the noise power per unit bandwidth that determines the trackability of the signal. Accordingly, if the receiver’s noise floor should increase sufficiently, even in an outdoor environment, the signals may also become untrackable. This can happen when the receiver is subjected to intentional or unintentional radio-frequency interference (RFI) by a transmitter operating on or near GPS frequencies. If the interference is strong enough, it can jam the receiver. Although intentional jamming is typically of concern only to military GPS users, unintentional jamming can occur anywhere and anytime and can affect large numbers of users within the range of the jamming transmitter. The jamming incident in San Diego harbor in January 2007, for example, affected all GPS users within a range of about 15 kilometers including a medical services paging network.

Such jamming renders a GPS receiver inoperable. But how do users know that their receivers are being jammed and not suffering some other type of malfunction? Clearly it would be advantageous for users to receive a heads-up when jamming signals are present and, if possible, for the receiver to take corrective action automatically.

In this month’s column, we look at some simple techniques, which can be easily incorporated into the design of a GNSS receiver, to detect, characterize, and actually mitigate RFI. Such receiver enhancements will benefit civilian and military users alike…. read the rest of Richard’s very useful column here.

… "Here’s yet another way to measure the success of GPS: by the efforts to negate it. While unintentional jamming continues to rise, intentional jamming by both foreign military forces and at-home miscreants of various stripes has shown increased vigor in the past six months. Related here are recent instances of intentional jamming on each side of the border, and (briefly outlined) one initiative mounted by the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) to counteract it. Also, here are some ways to detect and prevent jamming." …

Got going on this issue as prompted by the above thread on Slash Dot.  There are a lot of goofy folk on /. with no more understanding of the GPS than what they see in movies … which is usually laughable inaccurate … Hollywood has very little clue.

But some /.’ers’ are very well versed and do their best to try to keep the liberal arts major who are still surfing from daddy’s basement at age 30 in line.

The first link above points to what may be a overly comprehensive article for many of my subscribers … but here’s a synopsis of interest:

The Domestic Variety

Meanwhile, several Internet sites offer small, localized GPS jammers for sale in the U.S. domestic market. These include a "GPS Blocker" with an advertised 10-meter to 20-meter range for roughly $200. "Just plug into a standard cigarette lighter with 12 V for power," says the web page, "and it will automatically protect you from any GPS tracking on and within your vehicle. This is a popular item with sales personnel and delivery drivers, who wish to take lunch or make a personal stop outside of their territory or route."

On May 28, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a citation to David Steele Enterprises of Newport Beach, Calif., for marketing in the United States unauthorized radio frequency devices in violation of the Communications Act of 1934, specifically a GPS jammer imported – ironically – from Taiwan. The company admitted selling 67 GPS Jammers between December. 5, 2007, and May 16, 2008. The FCC stated that the main purpose of the jammer device – blocking or interfering with radio communications – is clearly prohibited, and threatened fines of up to $11,000 per device sold.

Hacker sites also publish instructions for a "do-it-yourself GPS jammer that can have a range of up to several hundred feet. Keep in mind this is not an easy hack; a bachelor’s in electrical engineering seems like a prerequisite." The parts can be obtained at shopping-mall electronics retailers.  read the full article on GPS World.

So, the bottom line is, it certainly can be done.  If it is worth risking a Federal crime to take an over-long lunch break is still a question.  One thing for certain that the larceny-minded workers and other clandestine jamming enthusiasts might want to take into account … although you can jam the GPS signals, say for a single vehicle … it’s a very electrically noticeable even and the results may cause a lot more grief than just following the rules might have in the first place.,

Tracking dogs and cats has always been a frequently searched subject here at the site that shows you how to get an ROI on GPS Tracking.

There may not be a huge monetary return on finding a stray dog .. although some people have a heck of a lot of money invested in a special pet … but if it’s a treasured member of the family the ROUI may be a lot higher than what you can define with money alone.

A tip to the blog hat Brian Heater for digging up this information:

by Brian Heater

So much for the old tried-and-true method of standing on your front lawn and yelling really, really loudly until your dog comes back home. Navigation device manufacturer Garmin introduced today a redesigned version of its GPS dog tracking collar.

Designed to work with the Astro GPS Dog Tracking system, the new DC 30 is more rugged that previous offerings and features a better antenna placement, according to the company….

Originally published at Gearlog.

You can get the complete information, and even order direct from Garmin if this item ‘turns your crank’ right here are Garmin’s own site. 

Happy tracking and when Fido disappears, the kids are screaming and your wife looks at you like you just tracked in mud on the new carpet … and then Techno-Dad brings home the puppy?  That, my friend, is getting and ROI with GPS Tracking!