Expectations of privacy...

[Lamplighter]

Years ago, I came to a belief about difficult private and personal relationships:
Most often, arguments/fights arise from "different expectations".

In the US, the public generally has certain expectations based on a Constitutional "right to privacy".
For example, we have required law enforcement to secure warrants
from the judiciary before conducting searches or surveillances.

Here is an article that presents several different aspects of the GPS
location devises... some I agree with and some I find repulsive.

My primary issue is that a GPS devise reports only it's own position,
not the person being targeted. That is, unless there is a way to prove/confirm
at every point that the target person is, in fact, at that same point,
the information can be faulty.
In some instances this may be important, in others not so much.

NY Times
ERIK ECKHOLM
January 28, 2012

Private Snoops Find GPS Trail Legal to Follow

But today, anyone with $300 can compete with Jack Bauer.
Online, and soon in big-box stores, you can buy a device no bigger than a cigarette pack,
attach it to a car without the driver’s knowledge and watch the vehicle’s travels
— and stops — at home on your laptop.

Tens of thousands of Americans are already doing just that, with little oversight,
for purposes as seemingly benign as tracking an elderly parent with dementia or a risky teenage driver,
or as legally and ethically charged as spying on a spouse or an employee
— or for outright criminal stalking.

The advent of Global Positioning System tracking devices has been a boon to law enforcement,
making it easier and safer, for example, for agents to link drug dealers to kingpins.

Last Monday, in a decision seen as a first step toward setting boundaries for law enforcement,
the Supreme Court held that under the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution,
placing a GPS tracker on a vehicle is a search.
Police departments around the country say they will be more likely
to seek judicial approval before using the devices, if they were not already doing so
.
Still, sales of GPS trackers to employers and individuals,
for a multitude of largely unregulated uses, are growing fast,
raising new questions about privacy and a legal system that has not kept pace with technology.

This easy tool for recording a person’s every move is a powerful one that,
when misused, amounts to “electronic stalking,” in the words of one private investigator.<snip>

“Selling a tracking device is similar to selling a firearm: you don’t ask
what they are going to use it for, and what they do with it is entirely out of our control,”
said Brad Borst, the owner of Rocky Mountain Tracking in Fort Collins, Colo.<snip>