Karl Bode, reporting for Vice: Back in 2012, the US Supreme Court declared it was illegal for law enforcement to attach a GPS tracker to a suspect’s car without first getting a warrant. But in 2018, cops in Indiana charged a suspected drug dealer with theft after he removed such a tracking device from his SUV, triggering a legal debate over whether you can legally remove such devices. As it turns out, you most assuredly can. A new unanimous ruling from the Indiana Supreme Court has declared that the suspect in question did not “steal” the government-owned device, and that law enforcement should have known better before bringing the charges. The case started back in July of 2018, when the Warrick County, Indiana Sheriff’s Office obtained a warrant to attach a GPS tracking device to an SUV belonging to Derek Heuring, after receiving a tip from a confidential information who claimed he used the vehicle to sell meth.
While the attached device delivered Heuring’s location data to police for around a week, it stopped transmitting shortly thereafter — leading police to suspect it had been removed. Police waited another 10 days to see if the device would start transmitting again, then applied for a new search warrant to search both Heuring and his parents’ homes. Under US law, law enforcement has to show probable cause that a crime has been committed before performing a property search. In Heuring’s case, police declared that the probable cause was the suspicion that Heuring had committed a crime by removing the device, something the court was skeptical of from the start.
of this story at Slashdot.
Source:: Slashdot