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posted by chromas on Monday September 03 2018, @07:20AM   Printer-friendly
from the watching-the-watchers dept.

Cheese Danish Shipping, Warrantless GPS Trackers, and a Border Doctrine Challenge :

At the end of August, a federal judge in Riverside, California made a potentially landmark decision for border privacy advocates—finding that it is unconstitutional for federal agents to warrantlessly install GPS tracking devices onto a truck entering the United States from Canada.

In the grand scheme, the decision stands in the face of a controversial but standing legal idea called "the border doctrine." The doctrine's concept is that warrants are not required to conduct a search at the border in the name of national sovereignty.

And in this particular incident—a case called United States v. Slavco Ignjatov et al. that allegedly involves Starbucks cheese danishes and a trafficking organization that sounds straight out of Breaking Bad[0]—the ruling could be a major victory for defendants as it would suppress any evidence obtained through the use of the warrantless GPS tracker.

The story is a bit on the longish side, but well worth the read. What I find amazing is that those involved could likely have gotten a warrant in advance with what they knew, and surely could have received one in the 24 hours after they affixed the GPS tracker... but they didn't even bother to try and get one.

On the other hand, given that roughly two-thirds of the US' population is treated as being within 100 miles of the border, I'm heartened to see any kind of pushback.

[0by which they mean its spin-off series, Better Call Saul —ed]


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 03 2018, @07:37PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 03 2018, @07:37PM (#729942)

    I don't know how modifying someone else's property without their consent could possibly be legal, private investigator or not. That's just insane.