As the principal author on an amicus brief drafted on behalf of NACDL and defendant Scott Weaver, much of Ms. Walsh’s legal reasoning and arguments were adopted in Chief Judge Lippmann’s decision which will have nationwide implications for privacy rights of all citizens.
Police must obtain a warrant, based upon probable cause to believe criminal activity is afoot, before secretly installing global positioning satellite (GPS) transmitters on private vehicles. I
In People v. Weaver, the police secretly attached a GPS tracking device during the night to the underside of Weaver’s and tracked is whereabouts round-the-clock for 65 days without any warrant, or discernable reason whatsoever. As of Tuesday, May 12th – New Yorkers will no longer be subjected to such high-tech intrusions on their privacy without judicial oversight and probable cause.
“By its nature, GPS is a valuable tool because it permits long-term, sustained surveillance. But its potential for abuse is staggering,”
The court agreed in strong language: “One need only consider what the police may learn, practically effortlessly, from planting a single device. The whole of a person’s progress through the world, into both public and private spatial spheres, can be charted and recorded over lengthy periods possibly limited only by the need to change the transmitting batteries. Disclosed in the data retrieved from the transmitting unit . . . will be trips the indisputably private nature of which takes little imagination to conjure: trips to the psychiatrist, the plastic surgeon, the abortion clinic, the AIDS treatment center, the strip club, the criminal defense attorney, the by-the-hour motel, the union meeting, the mosque, synagogue or church, the gay bar and on and on.”
The technology stores, “with breathtaking quality and quantity,” the court said, a detailed profile of a person’s associations – “political, religious, amicable and amorous” – and the pattern of our professional and personal lives.
Susan Walsh drafted the brief on behalf of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers’ which was joined by seven other prominent civil liberties groups who joined in the argument.
