Government Tracking of Citizens' Mobility

by: jason hammond | published: 08 28, 2010

Just when one thinks it could not get any worse with government intrusion on our lives than it already is, we get sandbagged in the gut with something else.  That something else now is treading on very dangerous ground right now.   The issue comes from a story online from the magazine of Time.  I do not exactly endorse Time magazine as an entity of great journalism, but the writer does a decent job in their coverage of the issue and at least gives the appearance of questioning the thought process of this new government process.

What is this new process?  To sum it up, it is a group of "stealth" government agents sneaking onto private property and placing a GPS chip on a car in the driveway.  This allows the government to know where a person is and where they are going 24/7.  From the article here I have to agree with the following statement:  " The court went on to make a second terrible decision about privacy: that once a GPS device has been planted, the government is free to use it to track people without getting a warrant. There is a major battle under way in the federal and state courts over this issue, and the stakes are high. After all, if government agents can track people with secretly planted GPS devices virtually anytime they want, without having to go to a court for a warrant, we are one step closer to a classic police state — with technology taking on the role of the KGB or the East German Stasi. "

This should cause an uproar from all American citizens that is so loud it would cause all government police agencies to reconsider this.  To me, this government we have now does not care about being transparent, but wants the ability to have our lives be transparent to them in everything!  This is no different than Nazi Germany back in the 1930's reading private citizen telegrams before they were delivered.

Using GPS technology to track or locate physical locations or property is not a new thing in our lives.  For example, electric utilities and natural gas utilities make their best efforts to obtain GPS coordinates for every meter that is on their grid.  This gives them a more accurate map of their assets as well as more pinpoint locations of outages and problems within the grid or pipeline flow.  The difference is these are things that are fixed and not moving and are reasonable to want the most accurate location of these items.

As far as the government knowing where and when you drive your car?  And the fact they can be on your property without a search warrant is very much over the line in my opinion.  When will it stop?  When are we going to say enough is enough?  Besides raising our voices about this invasion of privacy, it might be good to keep all our cars in the garage at night as much as possible.

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