Nowhere to Hide: How the Judiciary's Acceptance of Warrantless GPS Tracking Eliminates the Practical and Legal Privacy Enjoyed by the Poor

Abstract

Later this term, the Supreme Court will have a chance to decide the most pressing privacy issue the Court has heard since its landmark Kyllo decision a decade ago. Its decision, whether to allow warrantless GPS tracking in police investigations, will effect all citizens. However, one group will feel the impact of the Court's decision more than any other; the urban poor.This paper shows that the use of modern tracking technologies is most effectively used against the poor. This efficiency will lead law enforcement to use tracking technology against the urban poor in ways and in scope that will not be felt by other classes. Further, this paper will show that the Fourth Amendment protections currently enjoyed by all citizens have the least meaning in the context of the urban poor, and that traditional Fourth Amendment jurisprudence will not protect the rights of the urban poor in this context.The collision of practical realities and legal limitations create incentive effects that open the urban poor up to dragnet style policing in ways that other classes would not tolerate and likely do not understand. The Court's impending decision in U.S. v. Jones will likely determine whether the poor enjoy practical and legal privacy commensurate with other citizens or whether the rights of the poor will be diminished by new technology.