Technology, as everyone in Anne Arundel County knows, moves very fast. Sometimes, it can move so quickly that our criminal law system can have trouble keeping up.

But a recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court will likely bring at least one area of criminal law up to speed. That decision held that police do not have unchecked power to track criminal suspects via GPS device, nor to use GPS information from a criminal suspect's own device. Naturally, the decision was met with approval by criminal defense attorneys.

The Supreme Court Justices all had different reasons for their decision, but a general theme common to all their reasoning is that allowing police to track suspects with a GPS device or would amount to too much unwarranted intrusion. There was also a concern that if police could use GPS information whenever, wherever and however they wanted, an abuse of that privilege would be too easy. The Justices evidently felt that we all have personal freedoms and that the government should have a very good reason for intruding on these liberties.

Keep in mind that this decision does not mean that police cannot use GPS data at all. Rather, it just means that they have to have a warrant, or at least a reason and a specified timeframe in which they would use such data. This decision is so new that its fallout has not yet been determined, but it will be interesting to see what effect it has on our body of criminal law in the future.

Source: Bloomberg Businessweek, "Police Use of GPS Devices Limited by U.S. Supreme Court," Jan. 23, 2012