The United States Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the police cannot attach a GPS tracker to someone’s car without first getting clearance from a court. The link goes to a Wall Street Journal story about the opinion. In summary, the majority of the court ruled that the GPS devices were not a trivial matter, and that they warranted judicial review before their use. Using the small, inexpensive devices to track people amounted to a violation of the person’s Fourth Amendment Rights against unlawful searches and seizures. In separate consenting opinions, Justices Sotomayor and Alito wrote that the GPS trackers went beyond an unlawful search. Justice Alito wrote that the devices were also a invasion of an individuals “reasonable expectation of privacy.”
The passage that particularly caught my eye was Justice Sotomayor writing: “Awareness that the Government may be watching chills associational and expressive freedoms. And the Government’s unrestrained power to assemble data that reveal private aspects of identity is susceptible to abuse. The net result is that GPS monitoring—by making available at a relatively low cost such a substantial quantum of intimate information about any person whom the Government, in its unfettered discretion, chooses to track—may “alter the relationship between citizen and government in a way that is inimical to democratic society.”
Replace GPS with Drone and read that again.
Here’s part 1.
Has it already been two weeks since I went to the Olive Garden? Hard to believe. But the good news is that the team of gastrointestinologists monitoring my condition ‘round the clock has informed me that the meal is well on its way to being digested. So that’s cool. Hold on while I try to remember what happened that night.
| — | F. Scott Fitzgerald (via sangueblu) |
Recipe: Artichoke and Capers Salad
Hot, cold, served on a plate or tossed in a salad, this versatile dish is lip-smackingly good with chilled chardonnay.
From their March 2011 statement on Planned Parenthood, also found in a message to a questioner roughly 18 months ago:
Early screening through mammograms and education is critical to end the suffering from this disease: 98 percent of women treated for early stage breast cancer, before it…
Migrant trash piles up at remote U.S.-Mexico border areas
Trash tossed by thousands of illegal immigrants has been a problem for years in the Arizona borderlands that lie on a main migration route from Mexico.
Another week, another non-federation world that’s having some sort of internal conflict that the Enterprise shouldn’t-but-can’t-help-but get involved in. I’ve actually spent the last couple of minutes before I began this post trying to figure out how the title of this episode fits in, and I’m…
A pair of Boreal lynx groom each other on a rocky hilltop at the Cabarceno wildlife park in Villaescusa, Spain…
Picture: Marina Cano / Barcroft Media (via Pictures of the day: 24 January 2012 - Telegraph)
