How can cops and detectives utilize GPS and GSM tracking to find suspects?

Can police use GPS tracking to find suspects?

Many police forces make considerable use of GPS trackers in their work. The use of GPS gadgets allows police to obtain real-time information and operate more efficiently. Many people believe that police utilize GPS to track suspects, but this is simply not true. Police officers mostly employ GPS devices in their daily operations, such as finding police cars on duty in order to determine which car is closest to a scene of activity, and so on.

Without a warrant, police cannot utilize vehicle GPS devices or any other gadgets on someone else's car. In 2012, the Supreme Court explored this scenario. The Court found that connecting a GPS to a suspect's car and monitoring it for 28 days violated the Constitution. Antoine Jones was the name of the suspect in the case. He ran a nightclub in Washington, D.C. The police suspected him of dealing cocaine, so they installed a GPS location recorder in his car without his permission or a warrant, then used the GPS data to sentence Jones to life.

This conviction was overturned by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

'We hold that the government's installation of a GPS device on a target's car and use of that device to monitor the vehicle's movements constitutes a search, wrote Justice Antonin Scalia. 'It's critical to understand what happened in this case,' he continued. 'The government physically occupied private property in order to get information. We have no doubt that such a bodily intrusion would have been regarded search under the Fourth Amendment at the time it was enacted.

This implies that police, regardless of the GPS tracking platform they want to employ, must get a search warrant from a judge and provide a probable cause justification.

The truth is that if the authorities get a warrant, they may obtain a lot of information about you without actively tracking you. Police can use a warrant to determine whether or not your vehicle traveled through any toll booths and when. They can also get feeds from police cameras situated at significant crossroads. They will also know every time you were within visual range of a police car on duty if they have your license plate. If your automobile has a built-in GPS, all the cops need to do to find out what you've been up to go to your car maker with a warrant and collect all the information there. The same is true for your cellphone: they do not need to install any form of phone tracker program on it. All they need to do is go to your cellular service provider with a warrant and they'll have access to all of your records.