[daxelrod]

My understanding is that the ruling hinges on the physical attachment of the GPS tracker to a person's effect (their car) being a violation of the fourth amendment. The first two pages have a concise summary.

I don't see how that would apply here.

[monocasa]

Sotomayer, Alito, Ginsburg, Breyer and Kagan concurred with the original decision, but wrote separate decisions bring up these exact points.

[dragonwriter]

> Sotomayer, Alito, Ginsburg, Breyer and Kagan concurred with the original decision, but wrote separate decisions bring up these exact points.

Strictly speaking, only Sotomayor concurred in the original decision, Alito, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kagan concurred in the judgement (that is, the result).

The difference is significant in general, because the decision includes the rationale, and the Alito opinion (joined by Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kagan) disagrees with the rationale of the majority opinion. (That is, the majority held trespass to be decisive, Sotomayor agreed that it was in this case, but explicitly wrote a concurrence to argue that trespass wasn't necessary for a violation, and the other four agreed that GPS was a violation, but disagreed that trespass was an appropriate consideration.)

That is, there were four justices who believed that the GPS tracker was a violation because of the trespass to the target's property, four justices who though it was a violation for other reasons, but not because it was trespass to property, and one who thought it was violation because of trespass to property as well as other reasons.

Which results in the interesting situation, in that there were different (but overlapping with Sotomayor in both) 5-vote majorities both for the violation due to trespass view and the violation due to reasons-other-than-trespass view.

[cvwright]

> Sotomayer, Alito, Ginsburg, Breyer and Kagan

One of these things is not like the others. Did Alito take the same position as the others listed here?

[monocasa]

Basically. Sotomayer wrote one concurring decision, Alito wrote the other, and the rest were with Alito. Alito's not all bad; this decision really brought out the anti-government side of him.

[derekp7]

So basically instead of a GPS tracker, they could have an autonomous silent drone follow a few feet behind the vehicle instead, and that wouldn't violate the ruling.

[dogma1138]

Yes, the police doesn't need a warrant to tail you, question any one you speak too, or even use public systems to gain information on you, heck they technically don't even need in some cases a warrant to say get your phone records or any other record from any other person or company (they do need consent which is more often than not the actual reason behind a warrant being filed in the first place as it solves that issue).

They may not however tamper with your personal property.

If you do not own the car and say it's a company car the police might also not need a warrant to put a GPS tracker on it if they get consent from your employer, this might also cover rental cars (not sure about leases).

[snuxoll]

Is a passerby or member of the general public allowed to attach a camera to a utility pole? Last I checked, even putting flyers on utility poles in most municipalities is technically not allowed, even though they usually let you get away with it.

That to me would be a pretty clear line between a passerby and law enforcement in this case.