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Supreme Court case exposes confusion over GPS tracking
TECHNOLOGY Insight GPS and privacy
Wrangle over GPS tracking A US Supreme Court case pits the tracking of suspects against civil liberties SHOULD police in the US be able to Michael Dreeben said he accepted attach a GPS location tracking device that the fourth amendment to the US to someone’s car without having a constitution protects a person’s home search warrant? For many Americans and effects – such as their car – against that is a frightening thought. But “unreasonable searches and seizures” depending upon the outcome of a case by the state. But he told the nine that began in the US Supreme Court Supreme Court justices that what a last week, it could become a reality. citizen “reveals to the world, such as The US government brought the his movements in a car on a public case after an appeals court overturned roadway” is not protected. Antoine Jones’s conviction for running Jones was only tracked on public a drug-dealing ring. The Washington highways, Dreeben noted. And the DC nightclub owner had been suspect’s car could just as easily have sentenced to life in jail based on been monitored by CCTV cameras or evidence of regular trips to and from a property containing a massive cocaine “Installing a GPS tracker may be a sneaky thing to stash. This evidence was gathered do, but every sneaky thing by a GPS tracker that detectives had is not a trespass” attached to his car. But they only attached the device after a search warrant had expired – so an appeal by having officers tail him and no court overturned his conviction on warrants would have been required the grounds that the evidence was for such surveillance, he argued. illegally acquired. But Stephen Leckar, counsel The US Department of Justice thinks for Jones, says the extent of the this is a dangerous precedent and that 24-hour-a-day, technology-mediated warrants should not be needed for GPS monitoring was so intrusive and GPS trackers to be used – as is the case detailed that it amounted to a catch-all in the UK. The department’s position is seizure of the data that described his that the law needs to catch up with client’s life. “The police have the technologies like GPS, which is now capacity with GPS to engage in just another crime-fighting tool. grave abuse of individual and group US Deputy Solicitor General liberties,” he told the justices. Both 28 | NewScientist | 19 November 2011
the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation back his view, and are opposed to the justices ruling that GPS tracking can be carried out without a search warrant. It is hard to guess how the court will eventually rule. Some of the justices saw the notion of warrantless tracking as Orwellian, suggesting that without warrants even Supreme Court justices could be tracked. Others saw the data acquired as publicly available, and that technology like CCTV and GPS had simply made it easier to access and compile. When the case opened, Twitter users began swapping links to websites that sell GPS jammers. Using a jammer is illegal – but many of the websites where they can be bought are offshore and beyond effective regulation. A profusion of such jammers could risk creating GPS-free neighbourhoods where satnavs or cellphones – which use the GPS timing signal – cease to work. What happens next depends on what the justices decide – a decision that must be made by next June. Installing a GPS tracker “may be a sneaky thing to do,” says Justice Antonin Scalia. “But every sneaky thing is not a trespass.” Paul Marks n
OLD oil and gas wells might soon be reborn as environmentally friendly geothermal power generators. Geothermal energy holds promise as a low-carbon source of electricity because of its ubiquity – rock temperatures increase by between 25 and 50 °C for every kilometre of depth due to heat from the Earth’s core. But as much as half the cost of geothermal power plants comes from drilling into the Earth. Old oil and gas wells often plunge several kilometres deep to reach reserves. Refitting their shafts to circulate water could provide an easy way to extract this energy, says Xianbiao Bu and colleagues from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Guangzho. The team proposes a pipe-withina-pipe design. Water would flow down one pipe to the bottom of the well, heat up and then be pumped up an inner pipe to the surface, where it would drive a turbine (Renewable Energy, DOI: 10.1016/ j.renene.2011.10.009). Xianbiao believes that a typical well could produce around 54 kilowatts of electricity – not much compared to a full-sized power plant running on coal, gas or nuclear energy. But with an estimated 2.5 million abandoned oil and gas wells in the US alone, huge stores of energy could be going untapped. Charles Harvey n
Joel W. Rogers/CORBIS
Jason Hawkes/getty
Oil and gas wells go green for geothermal
Wrangle over GPS tracking A US Supreme Court case pits the tracking of suspects against civil liberties SHOULD police in the US be able to Michael Dreeben said he accepted attach a GPS location tracking device that the fourth amendment to the US to someone’s car without having a constitution protects a person’s home search warrant? For many Americans and effects – such as their car – against that is a frightening thought. But “unreasonable searches and seizures” depending upon the outcome of a case by the state. But he told the nine that began in the US Supreme Court Supreme Court justices that what a last week, it could become a reality. citizen “reveals to the world, such as The US government brought the his movements in a car on a public case after an appeals court overturned roadway” is not protected. Antoine Jones’s conviction for running Jones was only tracked on public a drug-dealing ring. The Washington highways, Dreeben noted. And the DC nightclub owner had been suspect’s car could just as easily have sentenced to life in jail based on been monitored by CCTV cameras or evidence of regular trips to and from a property containing a massive cocaine “Installing a GPS tracker may be a sneaky thing to stash. This evidence was gathered do, but every sneaky thing by a GPS tracker that detectives had is not a trespass” attached to his car. But they only attached the device after a search warrant had expired – so an appeal by having officers tail him and no court overturned his conviction on warrants would have been required the grounds that the evidence was for such surveillance, he argued. illegally acquired. But Stephen Leckar, counsel The US Department of Justice thinks for Jones, says the extent of the this is a dangerous precedent and that 24-hour-a-day, technology-mediated warrants should not be needed for GPS monitoring was so intrusive and GPS trackers to be used – as is the case detailed that it amounted to a catch-all in the UK. The department’s position is seizure of the data that described his that the law needs to catch up with client’s life. “The police have the technologies like GPS, which is now capacity with GPS to engage in just another crime-fighting tool. grave abuse of individual and group US Deputy Solicitor General liberties,” he told the justices. Both 28 | NewScientist | 19 November 2011
the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation back his view, and are opposed to the justices ruling that GPS tracking can be carried out without a search warrant. It is hard to guess how the court will eventually rule. Some of the justices saw the notion of warrantless tracking as Orwellian, suggesting that without warrants even Supreme Court justices could be tracked. Others saw the data acquired as publicly available, and that technology like CCTV and GPS had simply made it easier to access and compile. When the case opened, Twitter users began swapping links to websites that sell GPS jammers. Using a jammer is illegal – but many of the websites where they can be bought are offshore and beyond effective regulation. A profusion of such jammers could risk creating GPS-free neighbourhoods where satnavs or cellphones – which use the GPS timing signal – cease to work. What happens next depends on what the justices decide – a decision that must be made by next June. Installing a GPS tracker “may be a sneaky thing to do,” says Justice Antonin Scalia. “But every sneaky thing is not a trespass.” Paul Marks n
OLD oil and gas wells might soon be reborn as environmentally friendly geothermal power generators. Geothermal energy holds promise as a low-carbon source of electricity because of its ubiquity – rock temperatures increase by between 25 and 50 °C for every kilometre of depth due to heat from the Earth’s core. But as much as half the cost of geothermal power plants comes from drilling into the Earth. Old oil and gas wells often plunge several kilometres deep to reach reserves. Refitting their shafts to circulate water could provide an easy way to extract this energy, says Xianbiao Bu and colleagues from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Guangzho. The team proposes a pipe-withina-pipe design. Water would flow down one pipe to the bottom of the well, heat up and then be pumped up an inner pipe to the surface, where it would drive a turbine (Renewable Energy, DOI: 10.1016/ j.renene.2011.10.009). Xianbiao believes that a typical well could produce around 54 kilowatts of electricity – not much compared to a full-sized power plant running on coal, gas or nuclear energy. But with an estimated 2.5 million abandoned oil and gas wells in the US alone, huge stores of energy could be going untapped. Charles Harvey n
Joel W. Rogers/CORBIS
Jason Hawkes/getty
Oil and gas wells go green for geothermal