{{Infobox Court Case , name = United States v. Garcia , court =

United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit (in case citations, 7th Cir.) is the U.S. federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the courts in the following districts: * Central District of Illinois * Northern District of Il ...

, ArgueDate = January 10, 2007 , date decided = February 7, 2007 , full name = United States of America v. Bernardo Garcia , judges =

Richard Posner Richard Allen Posner (; born January 11, 1939) is an American jurist and legal scholar who served as a federal appellate judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit from 1981 to 2017. A senior lecturer at the University of Chica ...

Daniel Anthony Manion Daniel Anthony Manion (born February 1, 1942) is an American lawyer, politician, and jurist serving as a senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit whose chambers are in South Bend, Indiana. ...

, and

Diane S. Sykes Diane Schwerm Sykes (née Diane Elizabeth Schwerm; born December 23, 1957) is an American jurist and lawyer who serves as the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. She served as a justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Cou ...

''United States v. Garcia'' was a 2007

Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit (in case citations, 7th Cir.) is the U.S. federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the courts in the following districts: * Central District of Illinois * Northern District of Ill ...

case regarding the use of

GPS The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a Radionavigation-satellite service, satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of t ...

devices. The court ruled that placing a

GPS tracking A GPS tracking unit, geotracking unit, satellite tracking unit, or simply tracker is a navigation device normally on a vehicle, asset, person or animal that uses satellite navigation to determine its movement and determine its WGS84 UTM ge ...

device on a personal vehicle without a warrant did not violate a suspect's Fourth Amendment rights.

Background

Bernardo Garcia was previously convicted of distributing

methamphetamine Methamphetamine (contracted from ) is a potent central nervous system (CNS) stimulant that is mainly used as a recreational drug and less commonly as a second-line treatment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and obesity. Methamph ...

. Shortly after his release from prison, the police learned that he intended to begin manufacturing meth once again. They subsequently found the car he was using at the time and, without obtaining a warrant, placed a commercially available GPS tracking device on his car while it was parked in a public area. The police later retrieved the device, and used the information contained therein to locate the location where Garcia was manufacturing meth. Garcia was subsequently convicted using this information.

Decision

The court ruled that placing a GPS device on Garcia's car without a warrant did not constitute a seizure or an unreasonable search, but noted that its ruling would not necessarily apply to a program of

mass surveillance Mass surveillance is the intricate surveillance of an entire or a substantial fraction of a population in order to monitor that group of citizens. The surveillance is often carried out by local and federal governments or governmental organizati ...

. The court ruled that the device did not affect the vehicle's functionality in any way, and could therefore not constitute a seizure of the vehicle. The court also noted that the use of a tracking device, as in ''

Katz Katz or KATZ may refer to: Fiction * Katz Kobayashi, a character in Japanese anime * "Katz", a 1947 Nelson Algren story in '' The Neon Wilderness'' * Katz, a character in ''Courage the Cowardly Dog'' Other uses * Katz (surname) * Katz, British C ...

'' substituted for visual surveillance, which does not normally require a warrant. For this reason, the use of a GPS tracking device simply represents the use of more advanced technology for surveillance purposes, and that restricting their use would therefore serve to restrict the efficiency of law enforcement rather than protect the privacy rights of the individual. It is with this in mind that the court closes its decision by noting that a program of mass surveillance, which would be infeasible without the use of GPS devices, would not necessarily be constitutionally protected.

External links

* http://openjurist.org/474/f3d/994/united-states-v-garcia United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit cases

Background

Decision

See also

External links