GPS Tracking ROI

An interesting article crossed my desk recently.  Although it was written a few years back I find that very little has changed in the legalities of GPS tracking.  It’s well worth a read:

Rob Cerullo

Advanced technology greatly enhances a police officer’s ability to fight crime but presents challenging constitutional issues. One particularly helpful new tool is the global positioning system (GPS) tracking device, a computerized unit that police can attach to a suspect’s vehicle and then monitor to track the vehicle’s movements. The GPS device is similar to a traditional tracking device sometimes called a “bird dog,” but GPS provides more precise and detailed information. For example, the GPS unit can be programmed to transmit an electronic signal via a cell tower to a base unit approximately every five seconds. The officer monitoring it can determine the latitude and longitude of the vehicle, tell how long the vehicle remains at its location, view a computer screen containing a map of the area where the vehicle is located, and see where the vehicle is headed—all without leaving police headquarters.

The Big Brother aspect of this technology calls into question its legality. Because this technology is new, there is little case law on it. But two cases in the western United States have affirmed the warrantless use of a GPS tracking device under federal constitutional law based on U.S. Supreme Court precedent concerning bird dog tracking … full article here:

Although the referenced Police Chief Magazine article was written from the perspective of a lawyer giving advice to police officers in pursuit of criminals most of the advice is absolutely applicable to employers thinking about surveilling their own employees, parents wondering about GPS tracking their children and even spouses worried that their partner may have gone a’rovin.

In general the law in all 50 US states and many foreign countries permits observation of private citizens in public places by other private citizen, as well as law enforcement officers upon their official duties.  Regardless of the Orwellian hue and cry often raised when GPS tracking is mentioned, in your car while driving on a public road, you do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy.  The police or, in most cases, even another private citizen may follow you and make note of your travels.  Many celebrity “stalking” cases don’t wind up holding water because, if the alleged “stalker”, on foot, in a car or on the Internet stays outside private property and otherwise poses no concrete danger to the celebrity bleating about their precious privacy the bottom line is, in public you have no reasonable expectation of privacy.

The more complicated issues arise when property rights enter into the equation.  In the majority of cases if you trespass upon another person’s property such as their personal vehicle, or enter their premises to attach a device to that vehicle you most likely have broken the law, and if continuing to use that device to surreptitiously monitor you likely are committing serial invasions of the individual’s privacy.  So if your thought of GPS tracking involves placing a device on someone else’s car and monitoring without their knowledge, you better have a very good lawyer and you will be much farther out on a limb than I am prepared to go.

But the rules for an employer are substantially more liberal.  It’s easy to make the case that an employer can monitor the use of a vehicle he provides for an employee’s use.  In my practice I always make it clear that this monitoring should be announced in advance.  I feel there are some strong business reasons why you’ll get better cooperation from employees if the employees do not feel as if they are being secretly spied on, but covert or overt there are few legal issues so serious that an employer should give up on GPS tracking on company vehicles.

In the case of teenagers there is even less actual case law to go on.  Here’s what one often quoted legal reference site has to say:

… Contrary to there being any clear rules protecting children from parents using surveillance devices on them, the law generally runs in the other direction. Parents have the legal right to extensive control over their children, and that would include the right to govern where the children go. Children, on the other hand, generally owe a legal duty of obedience to their parents. These rights by and large are not taken away from parents except in instances of parental neglect and abuse; absent that, a parent has great latitude … Full FindLaw article:

Finally I’ll give my own perspective (absolutely not legal advice, see your attorney first) regarding straying spousal surveillance and divorce.  Once a marriage gets to the point that one spouse genuinely suspects the other of infidelity the couple is already upon shaky ground.  If the suspicious spouse feels there is no other way to confirm that his or her partner is straying the surreptitious use of a tracking device on a car that is owned by the individual placing the device, or jointly owned by the couple is probably legal.  Whether it’s advisable not only falls under the bailiwick of a lawyer but more likely a marriage counselor.  I know of a number of cases where spouses spied upon their partners in this way.  I used to receive frequent requests for these types of clandestine tracking devices, which I always referred to other dealers who felt ok with handling these issues.  The two most likely outcomes will be that the suspected spouse is catting around, or the suspected spouse finds out about the distrust and surveillance … and the marriage crumples.  As an advocate of GPS tracking technology I say, “sure, go ahead and monitor you spouse”, but as a happily married man I counsel, “Either you want to stay a married or you don’t.  Finding out if your missing spouse’s destination is actually a paramour’s home, or a bar, or a casino, whorehouse or dirty movie theater won’t do one thing to preserve the marriage and the act of surveilling the partner will definitely drive a wedge into the relationship that probably can not be undone.”  In all 50 states the general law on divorce is now some flavor of “no fault” statute.  usually the only grounds needed for a divorce is an assertion by only one of the partners that the marriage is “irretrievably broken”, so it’s difficult to me to see how GPS can help much … and if there really is no hanky-panky it sure could hurt.