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Tech

You're Being Spied on So Hard Right Now

Here's how.

When the FBI and the Metropolitan Police Force in Washington DC found out that nightclub owner Antoine Jones had links to a drug trafficking ring they set out to get him behind bars.

They installed a camera to monitor the entrance to the club. They requested and received information from his cell phone through a trap and trace warrant. But what did him in was the installation of a GPS on his wife’s Jeep Grand Cherokee. The device collected more than 2000 pages of data over 4 weeks. This data connected Jones to a house containing $850,000 in cash and 97 kilograms of cocaine.

In 2008, Jones was convicted for possessing 5 kilograms of cocaine with intent to distribute and was sentenced to life in prison, Much of his case was based on evidence collected through the GPS tracker. Only thing is: the police didn’t have a valid warrant to track his car with the device.

The Supreme Court recently ruled that the police violated the 4th Amendment of the Constitution when it placed a GPS tracker onto Jones’ car. According to the 4th Amendment, people have the right to be “secure against unreasonable searches and seizures” without a warrant.

Watch the rest at Motherboard.