9th Circuit Says Government Can Sneak onto your Property and Legally Plant a GPS Tracking Device on your Car without a Warrent

Surprisingly, Memorandum hasn't picked up this story and made it the number one story out there, but it should, because it demonstrates everything wrong with liberals and Democrats and their judicial philosophy. The story comes from Time and CNN and is called The Government Can Use GPS to Track Your Moves:

Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn't violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway — and no reasonable expectation that the government isn't tracking your movements.

That is the bizarre — and scary — rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants — with no need for a search warrant.

If you are like me, you're stunned and shocked and angry from what you just read. My reaction was "you have got to be freaking kidding me!"

This case began in 2007, when Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents decided to monitor Juan Pineda-Moreno, an Oregon resident who they suspected was growing marijuana. They snuck onto his property in the middle of the night and found his Jeep in his driveway, a few feet from his trailer home. Then they attached a GPS tracking device to the vehicle's underside.

After Pineda-Moreno challenged the DEA's actions, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled in January that it was all perfectly legal. More disturbingly, a larger group of judges on the circuit, who were subsequently asked to reconsider the ruling, decided this month to let it stand.

If only Pineda-Moerno were a terrorist than I am sure the court would have found something wrong with federal agents sneaking onto his property to put a tracking device on his property.

Fortunately, other courts are coming to a different conclusion from the Ninth Circuit's — including the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. That court ruled, also this month, that tracking for an extended period of time with GPS is an invasion of privacy that requires a warrant. The issue is likely to end up in the Supreme Court.

When one reads the decision from the Ninth Circuit, one has to wonder just what the heck they were thinking, and what liberals in general are thinking. They blather about freedoms and rights, but when it comes down to it, these are not conservative judges agreeing with the government's claim that it can go on to your property and bug your car without a warrant- they are liberals. Liberal judges, appointed by Democrats, using 'empathy' and 'diversity' as guidelines, are fighting for the government to control your freedoms of speech ('fairness' on the radio or 'net neutrality' on the internet), these liberal judges are fighting to take away your right to guns (liberal dissents on recent gun cases), and these liberal judges are now chipping away at your Fourth Amendment rights.

The Ninth Circuit court is the court most closely controlled by Democrats and liberals, and thus is a great indicator of the type of society and laws that they'd put in place on us if they were in charge or get any more power.

The DC Circuit court has 11 judges on it, and 6 were appointed by Republicans, 3 by Democrats, and 2 empty spots. Since it is so controlled by Republicans and conservatives, it is a good indicator of the type of society and laws that they'd put in place were they in charge of us or given more power.

The thing is, it is up to you to decide what type of court we get. The way that our federal court system works is that federal judges are appointed by the President and then confirmed by the Senate. Democrats always nominate liberal judges, while Republicans nominate both liberal and conservative judges (they pick liberal judges to try to be balanced and fair in a mistaken belief that Democrats will return the favor once they're in power). If you're looking for someone to blame for this decision, the appropriate person to blame is Democrat Presidents who appointed them and Democrat Senators who confirmed them, and since Democrats continue to support them, you pretty much can blame any Democrat anywhere on the ticket.