Update from the "GPS" Supreme Court arguments.

Kashmir Hill, Forbes Staff:

Justice Anthony Scalia, meanwhile, who is known as a privacy skeptic, focused on the "trespass”  involved in the cops actually going up to a car and attaching a device to it. He argued it was okay, though “sneaky,” for cops to get someone to put a beeper in Knotts’s car surreptitiously, but that by doing this themselves in the Jones case, that they had violated the Fourth Amendment protection of his “house, papers and effects.” Sticking to that line of reasoning would likely not be very reassuring to those people who are worried about the applicability of this case to tracking people using the GPS device we all hold near and dear to our hearts, literally: our cell phones.

Justice Anthony Kennedy started pushing in that direction, asking Dreeben whether it would be okay for the Gov to put a tracking device on someone’s coat to follow their movements. Dreeben demured at that, saying that would track someone in a private residence, not just their public movements on a road, so that would be a violation of privacy.

Chief Justice Roberts then posed a hypothetical: “Would it be okay for the government to put GPS trackers on the cars of all of us without a warrant, and track our movements?” he asked, gesturing at his fellow justices. The government’s attorney replied that it would be, since their movements would only be tracked on public streets. They looked understandably put off by this line of reasoning.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2011/11/08/supreme-court-justices-concerned-about-pervasive-technology-enabled-government-surveillance/