At 10 a.m. next Tuesday, the Supreme Court will return to the constitutional status of advanced technology, when used by police to investigate crime. The case is United States v. Jones (docket 10-1259). Arguing for the federal government will be Deputy Solicitor General Michael R. Dreeben. Representing a District of Columbia man, Antoine Jones, whose conviction for drug trafficking was overturned by a lower court, will be Stephen C. Leckar, of the Washington, D.C., law firm of Shainis & Peltzman.
Background
For more than eight decades — that is, at least since its ruling in 1928 in Olmstead v. U.S. involving a telephone wiretap — the Supreme Court has been pondering whether advancing technology can be used by police to pursue criminal suspects, without violating the guarantee of privacy in the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment. The line of decisions does not proceed in one direction only, but there is now a basic principle that governs each new advance in what might be called the machinery of detection. The Court is about to test that principle again, as it takes its first look at a highly revealing, new form of electronic surveillance.
November 05, 2011
