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Location tracking technology arrives on the law enforcement scene.

Before Scott Peterson was charged with the murders of his wife Laci and their unborn son, police put a tail on him -- a GPS device to track his whereabouts.

During his surveillance, Peterson allegedly traveled twice to where the victims' bodies were later found. The information gathered from the GPS tracking may be presented to a jury as part of a largely circumstantial case that the prosecution hopes will convict Peterson.

A judge will decide whether that information is admissible, and whether the technology is "junk science" and as unreliable as the defense is arguing. The case is one of the first in California -- and the country -- to challenge the admissibility of tracking technology in court.

The technique has been used before. In Washington state, police placed a device on the car of a suspect accused of killing his 9-year-old daughter. Police acted under the premise that suspects often return to the crime scene. Indeed, the man eventually, unknowingly, led police to the victim's grave, and was convicted of the murder.

The defense sought to have the case thrown out -- claiming the premise on which police were granted the warrant to use the GPS device was flimsy. The prosecution argued two things: One, police didn't need a warrant in the first place, and two, they could have obtained a conviction even without the evidence gained with the GPS technology.

The case went to Washington's Supreme Court, which ruled that police did need a warrant to attach such a device and that the warrant was correctly issued in the case. The case is considered precedent-setting in extending rights to suspects. In previous cases involving conventional means of surveillance, such as with a vehicle or binoculars, courts have ruled there were no rights of privacy.

The Washington case differentiates between those methods and the placing of a GPS device.

In the unanimous decision, Justice Barbara Madsen wrote: Use of GPS tracking devices is a particularly intrusive method of surveillance, making it possible to acquire an enormous amount of personal information about the citizen under circumstances where the individual is unaware that every single vehicle trip taken and the duration of every single stop may be recorded by government.

Madsen said the prospect of citizens being tracked to places -- such as a baseball game, a strip club, the wrong side of town or the grocery store -- weighed heavily on her decision.


Emerging Tools
The consensus is that GPS technology and other location technologies will become more of a tool for law enforcement as government catches up to the technological curve. As this happens, questions about how and when it is appropriate for law enforcement agencies to use these tools will likely arise.

"I'm a firm believer, and the FBI is proving this as we speak, that governments -- federal, state and local -- are behind the eight ball in technology," said P.J. Doyle, president of CJIS Group, a criminal justice research organization. "As the new technologies emerge, government is behind. Law enforcement is even further behind to the point that by the time they start using the technology, it's not considered emerging anymore."

Nevertheless, once law enforcement agencies begin using the technologies, legalities of use will have to be addressed, Doyle said.

"Any emerging technology requires statutes, laws and ways you can get the data," he said. "Laws are actually made as they're needed and interpreted as they're used."

Doyle expects that process to play out with satellite technology, which he predicted will be a "major mover and shaker with satellite phones and other equipment," over the next few years.

The consensus is that GPS is one of those emerging tools for law enforcement, which has been using the technology to track assets and resources, and is now using it to track people. In the Washington state case, prosecutors contended that using GPS was akin to tracking a suspect by vehicle.

Critics argue it's not the same thing at all.

Attaching a GPS device to a car is "the equivalent of placing an invisible police officer in a person's back seat," Doug Honig, public education director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, told the Associated Press. "Our state constitution has very strong protections for privacy."


Third-Generation Wireless
Third-generation, or 3G, location technology too will probably emerge as a law enforcement tool, according to John Morris, director of the Internet Standards, Technology and Policy Project for the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT).

The technology, in its mature state, will include enhanced multimedia (voice, data, video and remote control) capabilities, and the ability to use it in all modes (cell phone, e-mail, paging, fax, video conferencing and Web browsing).

On a consumer level, a Starbucks coffee shop could use the technology to lure customers by locating them in the vicinity and sending them coupons via their cell phones. If Starbucks could find individuals using the technology, why couldn't law enforcement use the same technology to locate suspects?

The groundwork is already in place. The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) requires carriers to implement electronic interception capabilities in their networks to provide law enforcement with wiretaps and information about calls from cell phones and other mobile devices.

If law enforcement agencies want to use wiretaps, they are obligated to get a court order per the 1999 Wireless Communications and Public Safety Act.

Morris said law enforcement could already be using the real-time location technology, but doing it "as quietly as possible," he said. "If you think about it, in terms of gathering evidence and arresting someone, the real-time location [evidence] is not the central evidence.

"It's not something every police department in the country has done," he said. "I suspect it's a relatively new technique but one law enforcement will continue to use."

As 3G location technology increasingly finds its way into cell phones, the days of the triangulation technology that tracks general location by cell towers may be numbered, and individual users' privacy will have to be addressed.

"We think privacy questions will become harder once the user really does have control over his or her location," Morris said. "We hope the user is able to maintain control over that location and push a button on the cell phone that says, 'Don't tell anyone my location right now.'"

Amanda Higgins, a spokeswoman for Thales Navigation, which produces GPS devices, agreed and said it is incumbent upon companies to ensure their customers' privacy.

"As tracking becomes more prevalent, companies such as ours should be responsible for advocating on the consumer's behalf to ensure privacy concerns are addressed properly," she said. "Consumers of these types of devices should have control over how their subscriber data and location information are used."

Morris said the CDT, for one, is working toward assuring that individuals have direct control over their location information.

"How that's going to play out in the law enforcement context, I don't think anyone really can predict right now," he said.

In the meantime, the Peterson case could go a long way toward legitimizing GPS as a surveillance tool.

"I can't imagine why it would not be admissible," Higgins recently told The Sacramento Bee. "It's extremely reliable and accurate."

But the technology displayed some flaws during use in the Peterson case, his defense team told newspaper reporters during coverage of the case. At one point, the subject's car was clocked at 489 miles per hour, and a device put into Peterson's deceased wife's car, which he drove, didn't work for a three-week period.

Scientists call that "baffling," but the defense is taking the opportunity to call location technology "junk science."