In a unanimous 9-0 ruling in United States V. Jones, the U.S. Supreme Court has declared that police must get a search warrant before using GPS technology to track criminal suspects. But what does this ruling, hailed as a victory by privacy advocates, really mean for the future of privacy and the Fourth Amendment?
While the Court rightly recognized that the government's physical attachment of a GPS device to Antoine Jones' vehicle for the purpose of tracking his movements constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment, a careful reading of the court's opinion, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, shows that the battle over our privacy rights is far from over.
