[Infowarrior] - Virginia court: Police can use GPS to track suspect

[Richard Forno]

Virginia court: Police can use GPS to track suspect

By LARRY O'DELL Associated Press Writer

September 7, 2010

http://www.wtvr.com/news/dp-va--gpstracking-appea0907sep07,0,7510292.story

RICHMOND, Va. - The same GPS technology that motorists use to get directions can be used by police without a warrant to track the movements of criminal suspects on public streets, the Virginia Court of Appeals said Tuesday.

In a case that prompted warnings of Orwellian snooping by the government, the court unanimously ruled that Fairfax County Police did nothing wrong when they planted a GPS device on the bumper of a registered sex offender's work van without obtaining a warrant.

Police were investigating a series of sexual assaults in northern Virginia in 2008 when they focused on David L. Foltz Jr., a registered sex offender on probation. They attached a global positioning system device to the van he drove for a food services company and tracked him as he drove around.

After another sexual assault occurred, police checked the GPS log and determined that the van had been a block or two from the scene at the time of the attack. That prompted officers to follow Foltz in person the next day. They saw Foltz knock a woman to the ground and try to unbutton her pants, according to the appeals court.

Foltz was arrested. A jury convicted him of abduction with intent to defile and sentenced him to life in prison.

Defense attorney Christopher Leibig tried to have the evidence against Foltz suppressed, arguing that the use of the GPS device amounted to unconstitutional search and seizure and violated the defendant's privacy rights. Arlington County Circuit Judge Joanne F. Alper rejected the argument, and the appeals court upheld her ruling.

Foltz claimed that if police could track him by GPS without a warrant, all citizens are subject to the sort of "Big Brother" government monitoring that George Orwell wrote about in his novel "1984." The court found no merit in such a dire warning.

"Several other appellate courts have acknowledged a very legitimate concern that, if the police are allowed to randomly track whole sections of the population without probable cause or reasonable suspicion, then privacy rights may well be violated,"' Judge Randolph A. Beales wrote for the appeals court. "However, this case does not involve dragnets and mass surveillance, so these warnings are not as relevant here."

According to the court, citizens have no expectation of privacy on public streets. The use of the GPS system provided police with the same information they could get by physically tailing a suspect, the court said.

Foltz could appeal the ruling to the Virginia Supreme Court, which has never ruled on GPS tracking by police. Leibig did not immediately return a phone message.