Court Strikes Down GPS Tracking Without Warrant - City Room Blog - NYTimes.com: Via City Room Blog - NYTimes.com .

In a 4-to-3 ruling, the New York State Court of Appeals ruled on Tuesday that the State Police violated a criminal suspect’s rights under the State Constitution when it placed a GPS tracking device inside the bumper of his van without obtaining a warrant.

The police had used the device to monitor the movements of the suspect, Scott C. Weaver, for more than two months. But the court ordered the evidence gathered from the device suppressed and ordered a new trial for Mr. Weaver.

In three written opinions, the judges on the court debated the constitutional issues raised by the growing use of global positioning system technology as a tool of surveillance. The case could set an important precedent for state and local police agencies.

In the early morning on Dec. 21, 2005, a State Police investigator crawled under Mr. Weaver’s van, parked on the street, and placed a GPS tracking device, known as a Q-ball, inside the bumper. It remained in place for 65 days, constantly monitoring the location of the van.

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Writing for the majority, Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman cited a 1983 United States Supreme Court case in which government agents had placed a beeper in a five-gallon drum of chloroform to track the container’s movements. The beeper was used to help the agents keep visual track of the vehicle carrying the container. In that case, the court found that the driver of the vehicle had no reasonable expectation of privacy since the van’s movements were visible for all to see. Judge Lippman distinguished the Knotts case from Mr. Weaver’s situation this way:

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