FBI Using Warrantless GPS To Track Citizens

The FBI massively expands use of warrantless GPS to allow Feds track U.S. citizens.

In a separate report, Wired gives us more background on the issue.

Battle Brews Over FBI’s Warrantless GPS Tracking

Kathy Thomas knew she was under surveillance. The animal rights and environmental activist had been trailed daily by cops over several months, and had even been stopped on occasion by police and FBI agents.

FBI Vehicle-Tracking Device: The Teardown

Video: The Dissection of an FBI Bumper-Beeper

How to Check Your Car for a GPS Tracker

But when the surveillance seemed to halt suddenly in mid-2005 after she confronted one of the agents, she thought it was all over. Months went by without a peep from the FBI surveillance teams that had been tracking her in undercover vehicles and helicopters. That’s when it occurred to her to check her car.

Rumors had been swirling among activists that the FBI might be using GPS to track them — two activists in Colorado discovered mysterious devices attached to their car bumpers in 2003 — so Thomas (a pseudonym) went out to the vehicle in a frenzy and ran her hands beneath the rear bumper. She was only half-surprised to find a small electronic device and foot-long battery wand secured to her metal fender with industrial-strength magnets.

“I think I must have found it right after they put it on, because there was no grime on it at all,” she told Threat Level recently.

The use of GPS tracking devices is poised to become one of the most contentious privacy issues before the Supreme Court, if it agrees to hear an appeal filed by the Obama administration last month. The administration is seeking to overturn a ruling by a lower court that law enforcement officials must obtain a warrant before using a tracker.

The constitutional matter until now has been left to district courts around the country to decide, resulting in a patchwork of conflicting rulings. Meanwhile, a federal lawsuit filed in March by an Arab-American college student named Yasir Afifi alleges that the FBI violated his privacy rights by placing a GPS device on his car without a warrant, and that the bureau targeted him simply because of his ethnic background.

In the midst of this legal controversy, Threat Level decided to take a look inside one of the devices — which are generally custom-made for law enforcement. Working with the teardown artists at iFixit, we examined the device Thomas found on her car nearly six years ago, which you can see in the photos and video accompanying this story.

When Thomas found the device on her vehicle back in 2005, she ripped it from the underside of her fender, but quickly grew fearful the FBI would raid her house if agents suspected she’d removed it. So she carried it in a duffel bag in her trunk for a week, while she and her boyfriend considered what to do.

Read the rest…

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