Re: Wildlife agents need warrants to place cameras on private property

BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com> wrote:

shawn <nanoflower@notforg.m.a.i.l.com> wrote:

. . .

Wasn't that an issue that got raised with someone finding a tracking
device on their vehicle that had been placed by some police or federal
officer. I can't recall if what the person was allowed to do with it.

It was a guy in Indiana that found a sheriff's tracker on his car. He
didn't know what it was and removed it and just put it on a shelf in his
garage. When the sheriff's department realized that the tracker wasn't
reporting any movement for days on end, they deduced what must have
happened and got a warrant to search the guy's house to retrieve the
tracker, at which point they charged him with theft of government
property.

They seemed to be arguing that they have a right to track you and if you
do anything to impede their tracking, you've committed a crime. So if
you discover the GPS tracker on your car and you leave it in place but
just start using other vehicles to get around-- have your friend come
pick you up, borrow your girlfriend's car, etc.-- they can charge you
with a crime for thwarting their surveillance of you. Using that logic,
if you became aware of the tracker and left it in place and just stopped
going places that are incriminating, they could charge you with a crime
for depriving them of evidence to use against you.

Seems like the best move if you find something like this and want to
take it off is drive your car to the local cop station, then take it off
in the presence of an officer and hand it to him.

I'd prefer to find the personal vehicle of the district attorney and
slap it on that so that cops will try to make an arrest when he's with
his mistress.

Let's see them make a theft case on that. (Unless they're not claiming
the guy stole the *device*; maybe they're claiming he stole the car's
future movement data from them.)

Certainly they should be allowed to remove it. Can they junk it or
sell it? If not, then why not. It's not like there is going to be a
"Return to the offices of the FBI" sign on the device.

They really did seem to be bootstrapping the equivalent of an
obstruction charge in the Indiana case by implying that if you become
aware the government is surveilling you, anything you do to thwart it is
a crime.

But I'm not under judicial sentence like pretrial home confinement,
probation, or parole, in which my movements are monitored and
restricted. I'm not under judicial order at all. I've had no notice. I
just don't see why I have a duty of care with respect to government
surveillance devices.

Drones have fallen in people's backyards and those people have been
reluctant to return them to police who simply won't explain exactly why
they were being surveilled.

It's abandoned property.

If they were physically following you around, like we used to do before
all this GPS stuff came along, and you noticed the tail, I wonder, would
it be a crime to alter your route and destination accordingly? You see
the tail and instead of going to your drug deal as planned, you text
your supplier "We're burned" and just go to the movies instead. Crime or
no crime?

Congratulations to the cops for preventing crime.

I'm also curious how they planned to meet the intent element of the
crime.

To obtain a conviction for theft of government property under these
circumstances, the state would have to prove that:

(1) He knew what it was. An unmarked little black box stuck to the
underside of a vehicle could be anything; and

(2) He knew that it didn't belong to him.

How can the police claim they retain ownership of property they
themselves put on the vehicle of somebody else with intent? If anything,
the defense to that charge is that evidence of a crime was planted on
the suspect's person. How is it any different than the cops planting a
gun on someone then charging him with possession?

A person could reasonably
claim that he didn't know what it was and he just assumed it was
something that came with the car and therefore thought it belonged to
him as the owner of the car; and

(3) That he knew it was the government that put it there pursuant to a
valid warrant.

I've never heard of notice being given to the target of a warrant.

As the government's lawyer admitted, it would not be
theft if he'd removed a tracker that had been put there by another
citizen. So a person could reasonably claim that they thought it was put
there by a rival 'businessman', or a private detective, or a jealous
girlfriend. Unless it's labeled "Property of Warrick County Sheriff's
Office"-- which it almost certainly would not be-- then it seems like
the state would have a bitch of a time proving the elements of the crime.

The same would be true of a property owner finding cameras mounted on
trees on his property. How would he know who put them there and why? For
all he knows it's some weirdo trying to spy on him or something.

. . .