05/22/2003

So it seems that police in Olympia, WA used a court order to place a hidden GPS transceiver in the car of a suspected murderer. He drove to the shallow grave of his daughter, and they followed the GPS signal and arrested him. He was convicted and sentenced to 56 years in the big house.

However, now the lawyers are saying the GPS device was an invasion of privacy and essentially an “invisible police officer in the back seat”, which violates the guy’s Constitutional rights.

On the one hand, I agree that having the police secretly track vehicles– on the suspicion that the driver has committed a crime and will return to the scene or at least to a place with evidence– is treading dangerous water in terms of privacy.

On the other hand, they obviously had reasons to get a court order on this guy (his story wasn’t that good) and it paid off because he was apparently the killer after all. So this was a good tool to seal the case and convict him.

The question, then, is whether this is a Good Thing or not. For a guy who’s griping a lot about invasion of privacy, I find I’m leaning in favor of this…