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Comment by gamedori5 | Hacker News Reader

Legally, what is happening when the police put a tracker on a car? It isn't a gift, or a transfer of ownership - otherwise the police retieving it would be theft. On the other hand, the vehicle owner should not be held responsible for damage to a device they don't know about. Does it become lost property?

If the disappearance of public property attached to a vehicle can be used to justify a search warrant, this seems like it would be ripe for abuse. The police could apply for a tracking warrant, wait a week, claim their tracker was lost, and then perform whatever searches they want on the private property.

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IANAL

My understanding is that it's the Police's property. If you find it, you can probably legally remove it from the car, but you can't keep it or prevent the Police from recovering it.

This might be interesting to you:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft_by_finding

Since you don't know whose tracker it is maybe the best thing to do is "lose" it again. Drop it down the nearest drain so you can plausibly say you never saw it and it must have fallen off.

> Since you don't know whose tracker it is maybe the best thing to do is "lose" it again.

Often, knowledge of surveillance almost completely diminishes its effectiveness. If you know your car has a tracker on it, the police won't get anything useful out of it, because you won't drive to any place you don't want the cops to know about.

Leaving it in place also has the advantage that you don't alert the police that you know about the surveillance.

You might need to go to those places, though, and not have alternative transport.

Is it legal to put it on your neighbor's car?

After all, you're not spying on him.

Or let it ‘drop off’ on an area of private property with a video camera on it. See who comes looking for it.

Or attach it to a semi truck that does cross-country trips.

This isn't they by finding. There is a difference between finding an object on the side of the road versus finding an object arched to your property.

> This isn't they by finding. There is a difference between finding an object on the side of the road versus finding an object arched to your property.

Sure.

If you're car gets booted, you can't keep that either.

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