United States Supreme Court to Review GPS Tracking Case?

Remember United States v. Maynard, 615 F.3d 544 (D.C. Cir. 2010)? That's the drug case in which the D.C. Circuit held that "prolonged GPS monitoring [of a suspect] defeats an expectation of privacy that our society recognizes as reasonable," and therefore typically requires a warrant. I blogged about Maynard here. The circuit court subsequently denied rehearing en banc by a divided vote. United States v. Jones, 625 F.3d 766 (D.C. Cir. 2010) (en banc). On Friday, the Department of Justice filed this petition for certiorari, asking the United States Supreme Court to review the case. The question presented by the petition is "whether the warrantless use of a tracking device on petitioner's vehicle to monitor its movements on public streets violated the Fourth Amendment." (As an aside, the question contains an embarrassing mistake, which I identify after the break. Think about it for a minute before you click -- you already have enough information to catch it yourself.) Here is the introduction to, and summary of, the section of the petition that argues for the necessity of Supreme Court review: The decision of the court of appeals conflicts with this Court’s longstanding precedent that a person traveling on public thoroughfares has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements from one place to another, even if “scientific enhancements” allow police to observe this public information more efficiently. See United states v. Knotts, 460 U.S. 276, 282-284 (1983). The decision also creates a square conflict among the courts of appeals. The Seventh [...]