Tracking devices can help — and hurt

I wrote about this same issue just a few days ago. it would seem this particular theme is going to become ever more frequent in 2006.

If you didn’t chose to read the complete article, here’s the gist of it: A police officer becomes enamored of a young lady. She isn’t interested. Undeterred our ‘anti-hero’ attaches a GPS tracking device to her car and uses it to keep track of where and when the young lady has visited various places.

This use of the GPS tracker, along with a number of other proven stalking activities causes the district attorney to arrest the police officer 0n the charge of “stalking’. The police chief then fires the officer, guilty until proven innocent, don’t you see.

Now, I’m not advocating one person clandestinely stalking another person, ever. I’m particularly against law enforcement officers using their uniforms and power (even unofficially) to stalk. And as most of my column readers know, I sell GPS units but I am 100% opposed to their use for illegal purposes.

But there’s a lot of confusion and arm-waving in this article that shows why the issues are not likely to be settled any time soon.

The news reporter makes in issue over the fact that GPS tracking units are readily available over the Internet, taking the tone as if the tracking units were kiddie porn or bomb building instructions. I fail to see the fact that GPS is available on the ‘Net as something bad, or that they should be controlled. This is standard uniformed media pot stirring.

What I do see as a problem, however, is that guidance for the proper use of these units is not readily available. And not likely to be any time soon. As the example in the article, was the officer entitled to secretly ‘tag’ and track the woman’s car? Almost certainly he wasn’t, but would he be actually illegal in all 50 states, and would the laws in the various states even come close to matching up?

What if the same officer owned the car but a third-party was using it? Would he have the right to track his property (the car) even though he was then also tracking the woman’s movements?

Now suppose the officer owned the car and the woman was his daughter? Or his spouse? Would he have more or less rights to track a relative than a stranger? Relative by blood or relative by marriage?

Can you see the slope we are heading down here? If I was a freshly minted lawyer, or one who felt his usual business was going to slow, I’d leap right out there and hang out a shingle as a GPS Attorney. It’s going to be along, profitable (to the legal community) fight before even the most basic issues on use of GPS vehicle tracking is settled and comprehensible to the common customer.

(PS if there are any entrepreneurial lawyers reading this I am available for technical guidance and expert witness engagements )