A recent ruling on GPS tracking has prompted the US Federal Bureau of Investigation to turn off about 3,000 tracking devices, says FBI General Counsel Andrew Weissmann.
The Supreme Court ruling on US v. Jones, which found that placing a GPS tracker without a warrant constituted an illegal search, has apparently caused a "sea change" in the Bureau, leading it to draft broader guidelines for both GPS device use and related questions regarding the right to privacy.
Although the ruling doesn't necessarily apply to things like mobile phone location tracking or collecting information from other third parties, Weissmann says that "even though it's not technically holding, we have to anticipate how it’s going to go down the road."
Weissman's comments were part of a University of San Francisco conference called "Big Brother in the 21st Century."
