Woman catches state police attaching tracker to her car, now they want it back | Hacker News Reader

Woman catches state police attaching tracker to her car, now they want it back

jalopnik.com

If you have attached a device to my vehicle without my consent, you've forfeited ownership. I have no idea how any rational person (or court, especially) could conclude it would be theft to remove the tracker. It's good to see some sanity.

Unfortunately, while that's certainly common sense, I very much doubt that there's any actual law or jurisprudence that supports it, whether the perpetrator is a police officer or a private citizen.

This is almost certainly yet another place where the law simply hasn't caught up to the technology available.

It'd be interesting to see how this might shake out related to lost-and-found precedent - I bet there's some insight there. If you find a sweater abandoned in the woods and take it home I'd assume that isn't stealing unless there was a reasonable case to be made that the article of clothing was recently discarded - but if someone comes looking for it or puts up fliers that may change the math on that.

This is essentially the same idea - something was left on your car, potentially maliciously even.

It's an interesting point, though I wonder how the intentionality would play into it. Malicious or not, it's hard to argue that someone who places a tracker (or a bomb!) on your car has "lost" it, as opposed to knowing exactly where it is and wanting it there for specific purposes.

In this case the law is just fine. The State Supreme Court ruled, essentially, that you can't put an object in someone's car and accuse them of theft if they remove it. The court invalidated search warrants issued based on that faulty assertion.

The argument was more that it was a constitutional violation - search of property without probable cause. The police conveniently assumed the device was stolen, and used that as a pretext to search someone's home and advance an investigation that was the reason for the tracker being fitted in the first place.

They didn't consider that the device might have been lost, and the suggestion that it was stolen was never a good one. ("One used tracking device for sale. Contact owner...")

I disagree that it'd be safe to assume that the police forfeited ownership so if they claim the device is theirs it makes sense to return the device.

However the article pointed out (and it's pretty reasonable honestly) that when the woman first found the device she didn't know what it was and was concerned it might be a bomb. Given that someone has attached a device to your car without informing you of the intent of that device I think it's perfectly fair to destroy the device - if someone asks for the device returned you can explain the situation and, as long as you didn't clearly know what the device was (i.e. have search history for that exact tracker device or have testimony from a mechanic or technician who advised you on what the device is) then I think it'd be extremely difficult for you to be found at any fault.

Car bombs are a thing that happens, they happen thankfully quite rarely but destroying a suspicious device is probably the best general course of action.

Edit to add: I think there's also no reason to believe that someone planting a tracking device on your vehicle is working with law enforcement - it could easily be a stalker or someone acting maliciously. This actually seems like really risky behavior for the cops if they ever want the device back - I'd assume the devices they actually get returned are by pure luck alone.

I just became slightly enraged and irrational at the idea that I could potentially be stalked by hostile police, and any defensive behavior could result in them misrepresenting my behavior in a legal setting and successfully convicting me.

If you're walking down an alley one night and someone grabs you and you punch them any reasonable court will find assault charges levied against you completely bogus.

Unless... that person is a police officer, then you could be charged with and likely be convicted of assaulting an officer. Police officers in America, and most other countries, need to adhere to a completely different and much more lax set of rules than most people - that's partially for a good reason due to the line of work they're in - but some people do abuse it and leverage law enforcement privileges and equipment to abuse random folks. Like, for instance, planting a tracking device on your partner to see if they're cheating on you - probably illegal and IA will probably come down on that officer - but they're much more likely to get away with it scott free.

> "Unless... that person is a police officer, then you could be charged with and likely be convicted of assaulting an officer."

Well, you can be charged for anything, and criminal charges themselves do a lot of damage, but whether you get convicted is a completely different matter. That depends on the court; there have been cases of people shooting police who burst in unannounced, and having the charges dropped, or being acquitted.

For a criminal charge, you're also likely to be beaten or otherwise pushed to submit a guilty plea, no?

In some places, police officers are required to document all such events, using on-body cameras.

We keep learning cops turn cams off when inconvenient, generally without meaningful consequences.

honestly we should treat any cop without his camera on as a regular civilian. Arrest and handcuff someone with the badge cam turned off charge them with unlawful imprisonment. shoot someone with it off murder or manslaughter.

> we should treat any cop without his camera on as a regular civilian.

I endorse this.

And then the video file goes "missing" some days after...

require them all to be uploaded to; a local, a state, and a federal servers before clocking off every day. and all to be interned into the public record within 90 unless it a court order says other wise and then must have a public release date given within 5 years

I've said this before, but I think LEO should be treated like regular civilians in almost all situations. I think that if there was some path for regular citizens to get any particular privilege granted to LEO, we would be much more cautious about what we grant to LEO.

There are obviously some situations you would not want to allow for anybody but LEO, but I think those are rare. In all other interactions with the public, LEO should be accorded the exact same privileges as a civilian. It just drives the point home when you reverse that sentence and say civilians should have the same privileges as LEO.

The details of how this is done seems to matter quite a bit, and if I'm reading this[0] right, if the officers have the discretion about when to turn them on or off use of force might be higher compared to no body cams.

[0] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11292-016-9261-3

> Unless... that person (who grabbed you while you are walking down an alley one night) is a police officer

You see, this is the wonder of due process. In a mostly-reasonable jurisdiction, police officers are required to, first and foremost and at the very least, identify themselves clearly as law-enforcement, and with that carries the implicit suggestion that "you need to cooperate and not fight back". No identification and they might as well have arrested you without reading you your Miranda rights.

> Police officers in America, and most other countries, need to adhere to a completely different and much more lax set of rules than most people

I wouldn't call it lax but I'd settle for slightly different. Of course, a lot can be said about abuses of this "privilege to be different", which is maybe why observers would say law-enforcement is held to a relaxed standard.

It is different but not lax because:

- ordinary citizens can't break down doors into private property but law-enforcement can if they have probable cause (Have you watched Breaking Bad?) or a search warrant. Good luck obtaining a search warrant as an ordinary citizen, if that's even possible.

- ordinary citizens are not ever expected to result to fisticuffs and if they do so, they would face fees or even jail. But law-enforcement can do so except there's gonna be a fuck ton of paper work afterwards and, should their reason for resorting to force be successfully challenged, face suspension or dismissal but hardly ever fees or jail time.

Of course the MOST IMPORTANT caveats here are (a) law varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, even for reasonably-democratic territories and (b) this is HN playing r/legaladvice, which is fun but not as productive IMO.

The most important caveat is if the cop lies about you doing something and you don't have video evidence that he's wrong, you're fucked. That's more than lax, it's willfully regulating for a system that attracts and defends oppressive corruption.

I am speaking for the United States.

And in Canada. This is correct.

A police officer is treated as an expert witness in a courtroom. If it's just you and the police officer in that alley, the officer's word will be taken over yours. Officers have a strong incentive to lie about the incident since they will always be believed.

I recently learned that - at least in theory - in Norway a police officer can not expect to be believed in court just because he is a police officer.

This was new to me and I'm not sure but I think I might have heard that it was because of some case in the 70ies or something.

I think in one of the Scandinavian countries, people cannot be charged or punished for attempted or actual escapes from prison, jail, or custody, as the desire for freedom is assumed to be a natural human motivation.

One of TPB founders was on Darknet Diaries recently saying this about Sweden. I wonder if it is true.

And the desire for power, money, or sexual gratification are not "natural"? You could justify nearly any crime by saying your motivation was "natural"

Trying to escape from prison is victimless. Scams, thefts and rapes have victims. Some argue that crimes without victims like using drugs are not crimes. They, of course, could be illegal and result in fines and related but not in restrictions of liberty like imprisonment.

"A victimless crime is not a crime" is a much more compelling argument than "the crime had a 'natural' motivation".

I'm not arguing one way or the other whether escaping from prison should be criminalized. I'm just saying the stated argument is really bad.

I agree.

So if an escapee is captured again they're merely subject to serve out the remainder of their time with no time added for the attempt?

In this framework, yes. But see, even if no time is added to the sentence he may lose eligibility for early release. And he will be prosecuted for any crime committed in the process. Look, I'm not advocating for A or B. Just being descriptive.

This is true in the US as well, at least where I live. Judges specifically inform the jury that they cannot treat a police officer’s testimony with any more weight or as any more correct than any other witness.

Whether juries actually pay attention to this or not I cannot say.

I just had jury duty in one of the most liberal states in the union.

I had the prosecuting lawyer explicitly ask us during jury selection if we would "take into account that police officers have training which [we] wouldn't have access to as a civilian." And repeated it during the trial. All without a peep from the judge. So YMMV on that.

On an unrelated note, the prosecuting lawyer then proceeded to systematically eliminate exclusively women and minorities from the jury, and specifically removed every woman of color. Which I'm sure was a total coincidence.

There really don’t need to be special exemptions for police. Cops as an institution abuse whatever privileges they get, and then lobby for more privileges. They are barely accountable.

Said with no real understanding of the subtleties of the issue and all the places where having special exemptions is critical to the police being effective in their job.

Yeah, it's not perfect. But you can't just say it's completely unnecessary without a fucking PHD thesis on the subject going into each and every one of the edge cases and explaining why it's not necessary.

We need proper checks and balances and accountability. Not to pretend we live in a fairy land.

To be fair you are the one claiming special exemptions and lack of accountability for the police. Maybe you can share some more details on why you think it should be like that, so that we can better understand.

I said nothing about lack of accountability.

Burden proof goes the other way. The police having ability to get physical with you without being charged with assault would seem to be critical to doing their job. Which is why they have that ability and citizens don't. You want to argue the widely accepted rules are wrong, sure, but the burden of proof is on you then.

How effective are police at stopping crime? Do we have any evidence that giving the extraordinary rights to regular run of the mill law enforcement makes a difference?

I'm not talking about federal agents working on large cases, but the city and county police who often can't be bothered to show up in person to take reports of robberies or assault.

How effective are those officers at using GPS trackers, drones, MRAPs, and other extraordinary equipment to stop crime? If I had to hazard a Gus's it would be not at all.

Maybe look at places where the police is defunded? Reports that crime skyrockets in such places are plenty to be found.

plenty of subtleties covered here, and no, the cause effect relationship of police budgets reduced = crime rising isn't quite so cut and dry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defund_the_police#Effect_on_cr...

That's likely confirmation bias. You'd also want to look at places where crime skyrocketed, as well as other factors likely to have an influence, like alternative support systems

That seems a very American perspective.

Not that cops everywhere else are just dandy. But, as for one example, compare the use of firearms in the US by police with just about every other civilized country.

That is a rational feeling.

Governments are the same things as mobs of course this is how they would behave.

Governments are the same things as the mob, of course this is how they would behave.

i wonder how much it costs, to deploy a bomb squad, and how many times that will happen when compliant about the device come in.

scenarios such as : 1] i see this thing on my car

2] a saw a sketchy dude messing around under my neighbours car

3] please pull over for secondary inspection before crossing the border

I think this is a completely reasonable way to respond to finding a tracking device and simultaneously discourage them from continuing the practice but please do drive out of county first so that the police officers that respond don't just say "Oh hey, Joe put that on this morning, we don't need the bomb squad for that."

You probably shouldn't drive anywhere if there's a bomb on your car.

If it's reasonable to assume the device on your car was a bomb and you didn't take any actions that directly disproved you had that understanding - even if your actions weren't optimally logical - then that would probably make a reasonable defense if the city/state tried to go after you for destruction of property.

for comparison, [there used to be a video] a keyholder or a container about the size of the telemetry device will bare minimum blow a hole in the gas tank and explosively ignite however many gallons of gas in your tank, gasoline having the power of 12 sticks TNT per vapourized gallon is a big boom

Of course they forfeit ownership, if this were not the case, you could stick and a sticker on cop cars and expect them to return the sticker to you without damaging it. Its not grafitti officer I'm just leaving my paint here, please give it back soon. The bin man's life would be complicated if everyone still owns what they put in the bin or throw in a river.

If cops put a tracker on someone's car they can expect the same response to a bird shit on the windscreen.

Why a sticker and not a tracking device? That’s even better and you can then track their positions across town.

I knew someone who had done that in a small town. The batteries didn’t last long but it was a “fun” hacking experiment. Tracking was just a basic transmitter which transmitted a ping. The idea was to get a reasonable idea a cop car was “nearby”.

Playing devil's advocate here. Let's say people start making car bombs that look like tracking devices. Or they modify the tracking device to become a bomb. Many police tracking devices already look similar to a pipe bomb:

https://www.npr.org/2011/11/08/142032419/do-police-need-warr...

This gets kinda scary if the person you're tracking is a dealer working with a violent crime syndicate.

>i.e. have search history for that exact tracker device or have testimony from a mechanic or technician who advised you on what the device is

I disagree this should even factor in. If they have not presented you with a warrant making clear they installed it, you don't know who installed the device. Knowing what the device is != knowing who installed it, their intent, or where the installer got it from. Nor do I think that a savvy criminal removing a tracker should become grounds for searching browsing history for parallel construction purposes since I somehow doubt third party records are answered in yes/no format, and the phrasing of query strings could be rather broad, leading to a reasonable request of search activity between the dates of installation and when they felt they "smelled a rat". In which could be bundled other incriminating evidence to spawn off new ledes.

If actually telling the person you as a government agency installed it invalidates it as an investigative technique, maybe it shouldn't be being used in the first place. Police shouldn't have to resort to breaking basic decorum routinely in doing their job. It's just converged on that because the population under observation aren't necessarily well equipped or educated sufficiently to be savvy on this sort of thing, or to make enough of a stink. Law enforcement also relies on law abiding people to remain silent on these matters because "it'll never happen to me" when there is no guarantee you won't become persona non grata one day.

>If they have not presented you with a warrant making clear they installed it, you don't know who installed the device.

"Police say a lot of things and they're both trained and encouraged to lie in the execution of their normal duties."

> she didn't know what it was and was concerned it might be a bomb. Given that someone has attached a device to your car without informing you of the intent of that device I think it's perfectly fair to destroy the device

Fair? Yes. It's 100% fair as far as I'm concerned.

But rational? If I thought I found a bomb, I'd be running as fast as I could from it, then once I was a hundred meters away at least, I'd call the bomb squad. Trying to destroy the bomb myself sounds like a momentously stupid idea for a number of reasons. Foremost being, what if this homemade bomb with potentially unstable explosives goes off in my face? Or what if it's remote controlled and the bombman pulls the trigger once I start messing with it? Or what if I successfully destroy the bomb myself.... what do I tell the cops and my neighbors? That I blew up a bomb but it wasn't my bomb? How many weeks would I spend in jail before my lawyer manages to convince everybody that I didn't make the bomb I blew up and for some reason I never thought to call the bomb squad? I think an unlucky man might end up in prison for many years if he did that.

Well, if you had reason to believe that the police placed a bomb then it makes sense to me that you might not trust whoever you get on the other end of the line when trying to contact a bomb squad.

If you believe that the place placed a bomb on your car in the Us then you probably belong in a psychiatric hospital.

It was in the news five years ago when the Dallas police (in the US) used C4 to blow up a suspect in a parking garage. It seemed to startle people then, mainly because they repurposed a normally bomb-defusing robot to do it.

In fairness, while it was in a garage, it was not on a car.

"We saw no other option but to use our bomb robot and place a device on its extension for it to detonate where the suspect was," Dallas Police Chief David Brown told a news conference Friday. "Other options would have exposed our officers to grave danger. The suspect is deceased as a result of detonating the bomb."

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/08/485262777...

While the use of a bomb in that case soubds like an affront to justice, I would think the police had probably cordoned off the area such that no untargeted bystander would find the bomb by accident.

To me it would only be reasonable to suspect a bomb on one's car if one did not know that the police placed it there.

Not if you have actually seen the device and it looks like a goddamn pipe bomb, as at least some of these tracking devices do. But if your response is anything other than running, I think you belong in a psychiatric hospital. Normal people run like hell when they think they've found a bomb.

Even if you do have a search history or whatever you can still claim ignorance of who put it there. Better yet reattach it to a long haul truck and let them have a great time trying to figure it out.

> Car bombs are a thing that happens, they happen thankfully quite rarely but destroying a suspicious device is probably the best general course of action.

Why would you destroy something you think is possibly a car bomb or a detonator?

Wouldn’t the best general course of action be to call the police? Possibly unless you’re a meth dealer as pointed out in a sibling comment, of course.

If you think it might be a car bomb, I would suggest not trying to destroy it without training. Best to call the police and let them deal with it.

Considering the people who installed the malicious device was the police, I think it's questionable logic.

For many people, the police are an actively antagonistic threat, not protectors of safety. In this very case, they used legal threats against her. Why would she trust them with her safety?

It was a tongue in cheek comment on my part, but now that you mention it, I don't see how it wouldn't be a logical thing to do in this situation.

First off, the issue would probably get routed to the local police who take these kinds of calls, not the state police who planted it.

This would probably create some paperwork that would frame the event as a crime before it comes to light that the state police were behind the planting. Bring in a good lawyer and you might have a better shot in court over this nonsense.

Regardless, if you're not trained, probably best not to destroy a suspected bomb on your own unless you have no choice.

This is some very "hindsight is 2020" thinking. She knew there were cops at her place asking around for someone, and the next day she sees men attaching something to her car.

How is she to know that they were state vs local police, and whether they were working together.

Besides, it seems clear to me she only "didn't know if it was a bomb" at first, but at some point likely after taking to NAACP, she found out it was a tracker. So therefore at no point in time was she thinking she was disposing of a bomb. That's a fantasy.

Here is some 2021 thinking: If you have reason to believe the police have attached a bomb to your car, you should run from the car. Better to abandon your car forever than to attempt to defuse or destroy the bomb, something you have ZERO experience with. It's better to lose your car than your life.

(You call the bomb scenario a fantasy, but that is what this sub-conversation is really about and it's the scenario you were responding to up thread.)

Are car bombings common enough in Baton Rouge, Louisiana that it's a reasonable fear? Statistically, having a fear that you're going to die in a plane crash or terrorist attack is totally unreasonable. Even if we ignore that, how is calling the NAACP an appropriate reaction to that fear?

Also I'm not sure destroying a device you suspect of being an explosive is recommended.

I think the point is moot, since even if you thought it was a tracker, there isn't much reason to believe that you are required to act any differently.

>how is calling the NAACP an appropriate reaction to that fear

It's not clear which NAACP. The NAACP LDF (Legal Defense Foundation) certainly sounds to me like a good choice to call.

Does the LDF do a lot of bomb disposal?

If you are a person who has been recently persecuted by the police and have a fear of police overaction contacting the LDF to help you navigate interacting with the police in any manner seems completely legitimate.

I think they have connections/lawyers that could help sue for civil rights violations.

Also, if the police are doing something sketchy to one person, then it is probably not the only instance, and an organization like the LDF could pursue the broader issue.

By analogy, if a corporation steals $20 from you, it may not be worth personally crusading for it back, but if you tell the right person about it, they might file a class action.

It was reasonable, because she never actually thought it was a bomb.

Given that there was an active investigation against her, and that they had gotten a warrant, And that she knew to reach out to the NAACP, it’s pretty likely she was aware ahead of time that the cops might want to track her.

Sometimes when you’re reading statements by the “victim” in a one-sided article like this, you have to read between the lines. As you say, if she thought this was a car bomb, she probably would not have gone straight to the NAACP to ask them if it was a tracking device.

I've they want their device back, which they attached to my car (or planted into my apartment) I don't think I have any obligation to return it. Same if you send me some junk with a bill for which I never asked.

What they can do, of course, is find a judge who orders me to return it. Could be, though, that they have to answer a few embarrassing questions in the process.

Given that they had a warrant, a judge already signed off on this and would likely have no problem ordering you to return the device.

> I disagree that it'd be safe to assume that the police forfeited ownership so if they claim the device is theirs it makes sense to return the device.

Unless legislated law states otherwise, it is certainly the case at common law that they “failed to manifest their desire to exclude others” and forfeited ownership. This is the basis behind “possession is 9/10th the law”.

Not exactly how this works though. If the tracker was attached with a legitimate warrant your “consent” is irrelevant. It sounds like the Indiana ruling was more about intent to steal and not some issue of ownership, which is a distinct difference.

> If you have attached a device to my vehicle without my consent, you've forfeited ownership.

Are you stating your personal take on the issue, or what the laws and courts have decided?

My personal take.

I mentioned more details in a different comment but I think your personal take is quite wrong legally speaking - I do sympathize with where you're coming from but, if you ever find a strange device affixed to you can probably safely destroy it unless there are any clear markings indicating ownership (i.e. a giant blue badge) - and if there are feel free to forcefully return it to the police because you're uncertain if it may have been tampered with.

Like the "Made in USA" stamped on the giant underwater phone line tapping machine on Russian phone lines?

If I found a box in my backyard that said "Property of <local> police department" - my first step would be to phone them up and ask them to remove it. If they denied that it was theirs then I'd suspect foul play.

It may be a touch naive of me but I'll tend to give the benefit of the doubt to identifying tags.

From The Wire, Prop Joe suggests to Marlow to "steal that shit." If it's local police, they'll come looking for it. If it's the feds, they'll just write it off. "steal that shit and see who comes a callin"

Record the device being smashed to pieces, then post it on YouTube (from 9000 proxies).

They're stating objective fact; the laws and courts can't 'decide' differently any more than they can decide that pi equals three or that swatting flies is murder.

Of course, that doesn't guarantee that calling them on it will end well for you, but being in the right never really does.

There's a category difference here. Ownership is a social construct in a way that pi isn't.

Possession in 9/10 ownership law, right?

Only if the social construct of ownership is defined that way.

Indiana Pi Bill - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill

They should make more vehicles that spew fart spray in all directions if the vehicle is touched in any way without the owner's key being within some range.

Would stop tracker attempts, unauthorized tow trucks that don't make attempts to contact the owner first, and thieves alike.

It's bad enough I have to wake up to people's cars breaking noise ordinances at 3am when a cat jumps on the hood or a heavy truck happens to drive by.

Now I have to get sprayed with fart spray when a random guy touches a random car as I'm walking by?

That only makes the security system even stronger, because now the random guy not only gets sprayed by fart spray but also gets beaten up by you, and my car is even better protected. And knowing that, the random guy will be even more afraid to mess with random cars.

What's in it for me? I intentionally don't have a car and I don't feel any obligation to protect yours for you.

All I get is the negative consequences of the decisions of strangers who do want cars.

Oh I mean, my bike can spray fart spray too. I've had 2 bikes stolen before, and wished they doused their thieves in fart spray. What's in it for you? Thieves fear fart spray and stop stealing stuff, and they'll also stop stealing whatever other assets you have or plan to have.

I'm sure fart spray wouldn't keep you from being charged under any number of booby-trap laws.

Courts have ruled chalking tires by meter maids to be trespassing. I'm not sure the final verdict on that, though.

Yeah, I think this case [1] unfortunately just encouraged cities to adopt electronic license plate readers, or manual entry of plates by the police. From a civil liberties perspective, that's probably a step in the wrong direction.

1: https://www.npr.org/2019/04/23/716248823/court-says-using-ch...

The law is not necessarily rational. A court must follow the law, not justice nor rationality. Sorry.

If we have constructed a law that everyone agrees is total garbage, we should fix the law. If we cannot fix the law, as I dread is true in this case, we have huge problems.

And that’s when it gets really depressing because it comes down to politicians doing the right thing.

Throw it in the garbage. Let them dig it out on garbage day.

I'd put it in the dog dropping bin at my local park.

Mail it to another police department as far away as possible.

> If you have attached a device to my vehicle without my consent, you've forfeited ownership.

I doubt so, at least with the special powers (and immunity) they have. That would be like saying that if they fly a drone into my property I could shoot it down and salvage its parts. I'd probably be jailed for destroying police property although it's their device that was actually trespassing. It's a complex matter, but with police involved in one side one should expect to lose anyway.

I think the issue is taking the tracker inside your garage/house where the police can track it (it is a tracker after all) while in your possession. A better approach would be to pull over into the shoulder on the highway, remove it there, leave it on the side of the road, and drive off. Then if they want it they can drive out to go get it. "Sorry officer, it must've just fallen off my car while I was driving."

If you really want to cause some paperwork, drive it to Canada and leave it there.

I don't think the Supreme Court ruling draws this conclusion. All it contends is that an individual cannot be charged of theft if the individual did not know that they were stealing in the first place. The ruling leaves the door open to charge the individual with a different crime (failure to comply with a warrant) or even civil proceedings.

You are making a "if I own the wallet, I also own its contents" argument. It doesn't fly unfortunately, and for that matter has never flown. Possession isn't the same as ownership. This is even more so true if you have knowledge of the source of the contents. How else would we catch thieves if it were?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possession_(law)

>Like ownership, the possession of anything is commonly regulated by country under property law. In all cases, to possess something, a person must have an intention to possess it.

Custody might be a more appropriate term to use against ownership.

> I have no idea how any rational person...

There's no reason to expect the law to be rational or objective. Why is it a felony when I steal from my employer, but a civil suit when they steal from me?

Because that's what the people who wrote the laws wanted. Applying the same reasoning to this case, I'd be shocked if the courts don't decide that the police have the legal right to reclaim their tracking device.

There’s also a precedent that things like car boots, wheel locks, and windshield barnacles are still property of the state and destroying or tampering with them is a crime. Even if you manage to remove them safely the government still expects the mechanism back.

Not only did they have a warrant, but illegally tracking you (e.g. without said warrant) does not forfeit ownership of the device.

You could have cause to sue them while also breaking the law for stealing their device; no one should trust your interpretation of the law, because it is wrong in every jurisdiction I’ve heard of it being tried.

In case you're wondering what one of these trackers look like, here's a teardown by iFixit:

https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Tracking+Device+Teardown/525...

I am laughing so hard at:

> This teardown is not a repair guide. To repair your FBI Tracking Device, use our service manual.

So it looks like a pipe bomb with a detonator

Wow, does it ever. This picture in particular looks just incredibly sketchy. https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/oYAZSOBmMEibujjd.med...

I would be scared out of my mind if I found that on my car.

> The device is powered by four lithium-thionyl chloride (Li-SOCl2) D cell batteries.

> Each cell is good for 13,000 mAh! That's about double the capacity of the iPad 2's battery.

Odd that they aren’t more specific than saying she was arrested on “serious” drug charges. Depending on who you ask, that could be anything from possession to trafficking. Sure, that’s not what the article is about, but leaving it so vague just make the absence of that information stand out.

Also, the story here really just seems to be this: police poorly but lawfully install tracking device on car, owner of car removes it, and police demand it back. Then they discuss a previous case where they court said it wasn’t theft to remove the device.

I’m not sure there is much of a story here.

The police shouldn't be enforcing drug laws.

They should be advocating for legalisation and regulation.

Massive waste of life, time, and money.

Cops choosing which laws to enforce leads down a very bad path.

I understand where you're coming from, but a society where the police have total control over who is arrested and who goes free — who the laws apply to — is a much darker world that I don't want a part of.

(And let me head you off — no, it's not the one we live in right now. You don't actually know what it's like to live in a society without civilian control of the police.)

Police do have enormous discretion over who is arrested and who goes free. It could certainly be a whole lot worse, but it could also be much better.

Police already do that. They don’t police rich white neighborhoods as deeply, and often don’t enforce laws to the same severity eg drug possession laws.

Police shouldn’t out as much time in areas with less crime.

Have you heard of selection bias?

The US has "a well-established tradition of police discretion", as Justice Scalia put it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-po...

I'm in Australia and I can tell you from direct experience it is precisely the world we live in.

The police have almost-absolute discretion.

If cops want to be political lobbyists, they should do it on their own time. That's not what they're paid for.

(I am aware of the lobbying of police unions, and I don't like it. Police unions are actually a great example of why you shouldn't want cops to be lobbyists, because the shit they inevitably lobby for is in their interests, not the interest of the general public.)

>Odd that they aren’t more specific than saying she was arrested on “serious” drug charges

Not the purpose of the sentence. When the police make a mistake, they have to save face by finding a justification, even if it's a vaguely worded accusation without substance.

Reminds me of this:

Cops put GPS tracker on man’s car, charge him with theft for removing it

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/11/man-charged-with...

After the article was written, the Supreme Court of Indiana did end up ruling in favor of the car owner. From the ruling [1]:

> To find a fair probability of unauthorized control here, we would need to conclude that Hoosiers don’t have the authority to remove unknown, unmarked objects from their personal vehicles.

In this case, however, there was no obvious indication that the device was put there by the police.

[1]: https://law.justia.com/cases/indiana/supreme-court/2020/19s-...

A man in my country, found police trackers on his vehicle, listed them for sale on the local version of eBay.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/48059/Man-finds-police-track...

She didn't have to click "I agree" on a giant pop-up model explaining tracking policy? I bet they even have trackers on their website too.

And how is it that they can justify trying up multiple people to attach the device, but not to track the thing and pick it up?

Interesting the comments mentioning they would keep it. If the police are showing up at my door looking angry and asking for their stuff back, I'm not going to argue.

I'm wondering if it's legal to deny the return of the tracker unless they can provide a receipt of them purchasing it?

For all we know it could be an FBI tracker, or installed by some other PD. So whoever can provide a purchase receipt can have the tracker.

Could you imagine the bureaucratic nightmare it would be to find that receipt?

I think that's the point

Well they get it back. This is far less ambiguous then a case I read about years ago when someone found one on their car. In that case, they started tracking him because of a sketchy friend. Kid took it off and sold it on eBay. Turns out you can’t tamper with a wiretap. I think the wiretap is the least of her problems if she is up in federal drug charges.

Wouldn’t you need intent?

At least in the Indiana case that was why the charges did not stick for the man who took it off. He plausibly didn’t intend to ruin a wiretap or steal the device because he thought it was some random thing and he took it off his car.

> “To find a fair probability of unauthorized control here, we would need to conclude the Hoosiers don’t have the authority to remove unknown, unmarked objects from their personal vehicles,” Chief Justice Loretta Rush wrote for a unanimous court.

"the Hoosiers"? I know what the word means, obvi, just seems an odd wording for a judicial finding.

It's written by Indianans for the Indiana Supreme Court.

It's also easy to argue that the car owner had no reason to think it was law enforcement that put it there and not a private investigator or a stalker.

Yes, it's in the preceding paragraph before the cited one.

Finders keepers. Or better yet, if small enough and you have thick gloves, attach it to a feral cat :)

Waste. The Chief of Police's personal vehicle would be more poetic.

Nah, too easy to retrieve. Better an international shipping vessel.

International is good; run up those SIM card charges.

Reminds me of the surveillance van shipped abroad by the union in the Wire XD

Or, shove it on a cross-country 18-wheeler. Let them chase it down.

While it would be incredibly fun to see the police be led on a goose chase, it's just as wrong to put the unsuspecting truck driver under the same non-consensual tracking situation that original person found themselves in.

Two wrongs don't make a right but it may lead to different methods being used.

I can't believe no one has mentioned using the car for ride sharing. Let them try to figure out why you are taking such random, meandering paths and make them do more work to get warrants for data from each ride sharing company for elimination purposes. Bonus points if you sometimes remove the tracker and leave it at your house while you are engaging in ride sharing to make the data overlap imperfect and also if you mix in some random driving while the tracker is on to confuse the observers.

So many options! On a police cruiser. Up a tree. Under a dumpster behind the impound lot. In the discount bin at Victoria's Secret.

The mind boggles!

That last one was really funny :)

> ongoing investigation involving Ms. Beverly and a suspect

It should be illegal to directly spy on people who themselves are not suspects.

>>“To find a fair probability of unauthorized control here, we would need to conclude the Hoosiers don’t have the authority to remove unknown, unmarked objects from their personal vehicles,” Chief Justice Loretta Rush wrote for a unanimous court.

Yup. Finders' keepers.

The only question is what is the most fun thing to do with it. Maybe a full teardown? Or, use a drone to deposit it up on the top of a tel/power utility pole a block from the police offices (or just attach it to a strong string and another weight and throw it waaaay up in a tree nearby?

There's surely more clever & fun ideas out there...

Microwave oven. 30 seconds. Full power.

Your microwave will smell really bad for a while, don't do that unless you have a dedicated non-food microwave.

Those things are what, $40 now? Why are the police such cheapskates about them? If they are hoping to get some incriminating information from an offline tracker then wouldn't they be asking the suspect to help incriminate themselves by returning it?

$40 if you were to buy one from Alibaba, I'm sure the ones that get sold to police departments cost hundreds, if not thousands, along with expensive subscription fees and mandatory training programmes.

The problem is that the police can't track the tracker!

I'm curious as to what would happen if, after discovering a tracker on her car, she put the tracker in a box then FedEx'ed it to an overseas country?

They should be required to attach a warrant ID to the device allowing someone to lookup the warrant however I am assuming in this case there was no warrant making the whole thing illegal.

Edit: they did have a warrant, which I missed reading the article.

According to the article it looks like they did secure a warrant first.

What a ridiculous thing to assume. Especially since TFA features a statement literally saying "a warrant was obtained for the surveillance equipment."

There's no reason to assume that the statement is true, it's coming from the police, they could easily be lying.

There is, honestly, less of a reason to believe it's false. They may be lying but our legal system relies on us trusting the police to be honest and, ideally, strongly punishes those who abuse that trust.

I'm happy to concede that policing in America has long eroded that trust but it's still a requirement that you obey and openly communicate with anyone identifying themselves as law enforcement.

> it's still a requirement that you obey and openly communicate with anyone identifying themselves as law enforcement.

There is no requirement that you communicate openly with police. See: the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution.

Actually yea - I was wrongish on this one. It's a state level decision[1] with different requirements and generally a requirement of suspicion of guilt. I was mostly thinking of surface level information (identification and the like) rather than any sort of detailed information that might contribute to guilt - but even that surface level information is still protected information.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_and_identify_statutes

Even if you don't trust police at all, it makes no sense for them to lie about this. The truth of the matter will come out in court, lying has no upside and significant downside.

What is the downside of the police lying? Assuming they didn't have a warrant then they either lie and it doesn't make the situation worse as police are allowed to lie or they don't lie and guarantee a lawsuit.

I'd understand the argument for why they're incentivized to get a warrant in the first place (even assuming parallel construction is a viable alternative to getting a warrant as they may be caught) but that doesn't mean they wouldn't lie after they got caught screwing up.

The source of that statement is the police, who have an incentive to lie at this point. And the statement is uncorroborated, and remains so by their own doing, since they're also apparently claiming the right to keep the warrant secret until after the investigation is over. Which doesn't sound too kosher. So you might've been right.

>since they're also apparently claiming the right to keep the warrant secret until after the investigation is over

Don't you have to present the warrant to the subject at the time of the "search"? In other words, you can't go knock on someone's door, claim that you have a warrant to search the house, and refuse to show it to him.

Don't know how it works for this specific case, but for surveillance warrants it's obviously not a requirement (e.g. tapping someone's phone doesn't really work if you tell them at the same time that you are doing that), with different places having different rules if and when exactly the target has to be informed.

This might be a bit meta. But why is the article interspersed with segments/links to other articles longer than one screen on my phone so that every time I think the article is finished?

Throw it in trash and police can play easter egg hunt in the landfill

either give it back to them, stuck under one of thier cars, or leave it in place and start hanging around near the local precinct

I’d mail it to a police station in Russia for instance :)

Best to reattach to police chief’s vehicle. Enough said.

I bet that tracking a police car or spying police private conversations would be a typified crime, and with our name clearly written in the device serial number.

If police is trying to prove that you are a criminal, basically you would be doing they life much easier.

-> doing -their- life much easier

If only they had a tracker on their tracker, to help find it when the tracker gets lost

> A woman in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, watched State Police place a tracking device on her vehicle last weekend and contacted her local NAACP president

Why would you contact the NAACP over the ACLU?

Seems almost like their main complaint is the lack of stealth or professionalism this surveillance in the police’s execution, an odd complaint. With enemies like these...

It’s also weird to describe the state police as an “agency”.

> “It’s bush league,” Collins told WBRZ. “The fact that a young woman can see you doing something like this means you’re not very good at it.”

It’s interesting that in today’s witch-huntocracy, the NAACP chapter president would be so careless with his words

So this woman was written up on charges for Distribution/Manufacture of Schedule 1 drugs (among other things)[0], and was subsequently the subject of a minor inconvenience when she discovered that she was being (legally) monitored by the cops. The cops then asked for their property back.

And the result of this was a sympathetic write-up of the poor, mildly inconvenienced drug dealer?

We are really scraping the bottom of the barrel in our search for victimization porn...

[0] https://www.publicpolicerecord.com/louisiana/batonrouge-jail...

Shame on you for victimizing someone because you label them with a status that somehow makes them lower than you in society?

Should we only care if it happens to someone of your status or do we want to apply laws equally?

I don't think status has anything to do with their comment. What made you bring it up?

"drug dealer" ... "bottom of the barrel"...

The obvious implication is that drug dealers are low-status individuals who deserve this kind of treatment.

They never said that she was bottom of the barrel.

What's your experience of drug dealers? I'm really curious where this new age anti police pro drug peddler mentality is coming from because I've had multiple friends over my 40 years lost to drugs so what the fuck is the defence of these people about? Many people that can be sold drugs are victims.. so yeah these drug dealer cretins are low status.

It's the result of the influx of young western kids smoking weed. They think they will go to prison for 800 years if they are caught, so they become anti police to feel better about their bad habits.

Or it could because there is increased awareness of the originally racist and authoritarian motives for modern drug laws? I'm not of the mind that weed cannot and does not frequently become a bad habit but weed abuse is far less problematic than alcohol abuse yet the former is treated as a criminal affair.

Black people are the most consistently anti-police demographic so I don't know where you're getting the idea that it's "young western kids" that are propagating the anti-police rhetoric.

The quote: "scraping the bottom of the barrel"

To label a group of people lower than the lowest implies these people belong to a lower class.

class = status

Doesn't look to me like the 'bottom of the barrel' comment was applied to the social status of the woman. Looked more like parent was making the point that it's a stretch to call the drug dealer the victim...that the reporter must be scraping the 'bottom of the barrel' of their story ideas.

You're going to have to be a lot more specific. What makes you think 'bottom of the barrel' was referring to the social status of the woman?

Criminals are definitely belong in a lower status category.

The most important rights to protect, in my opinion, are the rights of people accused of a crime. Everything needs to be done transparently, legally, and fairly, no matter how bad the alleged crime is.

It's the process we need to respect.

We are in total agreement with regards to the principles involved. So... in what way were her rights not protected? Cops can do surveillance, right? They got a warrant, after all. There is plenty of loaded language and implied wrongdoing, but what was done that was actually wrong?

She could be a serial killer that’s not the point.

It doesn’t matter if she’s guilty or not, what matters is can you be charged with a crime if you remove a piece of surveillance equipment from your own property if so it sets a very bad precedent what’s next if the police sets a wiretap on your phone and you switch numbers you gonna be charged with interfering with a police investigation or some other nonsense too?

She might as well be very much guilty in regards to the drugs offenses but it doesn’t mean she can or should be guilty of theft or any other offense due to removing a device from her car.

>what matters is can you be charged with a crime if you remove a piece of surveillance equipment from your own property if so it sets a very bad precedent

Did you read the article? She wasn't charged. There is no indication she was charged or will be charged. There is just a claim by a third party that the police "demanded" the return of the device, and some armchair lawyering (citing out-of-state case law) that's intended to imply police overreach where none exists.

Take this as you may, but I would just like point out that this is even more strongly implemented in courts via an offence called 'contempt of court'.

Here is what is advised to do to avoid being charged with contempt of court. 1) Know the etiquette and court standards of the court for which you will appear, including dress codes; [1] 2) Avoid raising your voice, outbursts, or any other display of anger or adverse reactions to an order. [1]

Here are some selected things that can get you a contempt of court offence: 1) Criminal Contempt: being rude or disrespectful to court proceedings, the judge, or attorneys in the proceedings, or causing some type of disturbance in the courtroom. [2] 2) Direct Contempt: an action taken in the presence of the court, which is intended to cause embarrassment or show disrespect for the court. [2] 3) Indirect Contempt: actions taken away from the court, which are intended to mock, degrade, or obstruct the court or court proceedings. ... In addition, publishing or handing out flyers intended to cause disrespect for the court may be considered an act of indirect contempt. [2]

Here is an explanation of being imprisoned for contempt of court: Even in cases of civil contempt, jail time is sometimes threatened, though if imposed it is usually brief. In fact, jail time usually ends when the individual complies with the judge’s order. In this situation, the jailed individual is usually placed in the custody of the local sheriff or other court officer and, because he is said to “hold the keys to his own cell,” due process of law is not necessary. [2]

Now from this you can see that someone could honestly criticize the courts and be imprisoned forever until they lie they lie and say that the court is great. If they are too honest and aren't willing to lie or be dishonest then they will stay imprisoned until they die, with no due process.

Now you can imagine how this can translate to a police officer being able to arrest or lock up people for not being respectful enough to them. The different levels of law enforcement are not unlinked, from the legislature down to the police. Scary to think about legal punishments for criticizing the wrong people/institutions. Instead of just looking at police, it may be much more beneficial to look at the whole system (including the police), seriously look at the whole system.

Here is an example of someone getting huge fines and jail time is right here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe2BfdlzwgI (CNN: Judge flips out after getting flipped off). I personally found that disgusting and it stuck in my head, although as from [1] the defendant apologized about the outburst and said she was under the influence at court after four days in jail. If she was unwilling to be dishonest and thought that the punishment was excessive, she could still be in jail today.

Note: It should go without saying but I am most definitely not a lawyer, who has not studied the law in any slightly significant way, this is just what I have observed during ordinary life. And for the 5 people who read this, sorry if this comment was too long.

[1] Contempt of Court: Woman Gets 30 Days in Jail for Disrespecting Judge, https://blog.novakazlaw.com/contempt-of-court-woman-gets-30-...

[2] Contempt of Court, https://web.archive.org/web/20210123193533/https://legaldict...

If you find something that is not yours, whatever it is, you don't get to keep it. And if the owner wants it back and you don't want to give it back, it is theft. I am sure there are plenty of special cases and a variety of laws but that's the general idea.

And if the tracker was legally installed, you know it is owned by the police and don't want to give it back, then it is reasonable to call it theft. We can't blame her if she destroyed it, torn it apart or whatever but now that she knows, there is no excuse.

Now, I don't know what the laws are but I think that could be perfectly reasonable to say: I will put it on my front porch tomorrow, it will be in an expensive looking box, feel free to pick it up. I mean, with you around, there is no way someone would want to steal an expensive looking box sitting unattended on the street, right ;)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com