United States Vs. Jones
United States VS. Jones was a landmark Supreme Court case, where the court held that planting a GPS tracking device on a "suspects" vehicle and using a device to monitor the vehicle's movements constitutes a search under the fourth amendment. The "suspect" in question was one Antoine Jones, who was suspected by DC police of drug trafficking. The investigators were approved to use a GPS device but exceeded the length and time of the GPS use approved on their warrant. All nine justices agreed, even though for different reasons, that the search was just.In an article written by Tony Romm for politico the case was explained as such "In 2004, the FBI and D.C. police began investigating Jones, a night club owner, for trafficking narcotics. Authorities applied in 2005, before a D.C. court, to track the car owned by Jones’s wife. According to the court, the warrant was issued with a 10-day time horizon. But authorities did not install it until the 11th day, and they did it outside of Washington, D.C. They ultimately tracked Jones’s movements for 28 days, collecting evidence that led to a number of charges on possession and more. With Jones facing a life sentence, a legal battle ensued over whether the GPS evidence was admissible in those proceedings. The Supreme Court took the case last year. In arguments, the government contended that vehicles traveling on public roads lack a reasonable expectation of privacy, relying on a 1983 case involving the placement of a so-called beeper in a container that police tracked. But the argument was met with skepticism before the court, which noted the great advances in location tracking technology in over two decades."
I believe that the judges made a bad judgement here, as the warrants limits had been expired. This sets a weird precedent that as long as you have a hunch of illegal activity (assumedly non-violent illegal activity) that you can disregard the rules set in place.