◆ SpookStack

Declassified Document Archive & Reader
Log In Register
Reader Ad Slot
Reader Ad Slot placeholder
If you would like to support SpookStack without paying out of pocket, please consider allowing advertising cookies. It helps cover hosting costs and keeps the archive free to browse. You can change this choice at any time.

fbi-use-of-global-postioning-system-gps-tracking — Part 01

32 pages · May 14, 2026 · Broad topic: General · Topic: fbi-use-of-global-postioning-system-gps-tracking · 32 pages OCR'd
← Back to feed
he went on public roads over the course of a month. The Government implicitly poses the wrong question, however. In considering whether something is "exposed' to the public as that term was used in a reasonable person expects another might actually do. See California y. Greenwood. 486 U.S. 35, 40 (1988) (It is common knowledge that plastic garbage bags left on or at the. side of a public street are readily accessible to animals, children, scavengers, snoops, and other members of the public'); California v. Ciraolo, 476 U.S. 207, 213, 214 (1986) ("in an age where private and commercial flight in the public airways is routine," defendant did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in location that "Jalny member of the public flying in this airspace who glanced down could have seen'); Florida y. Riley, 488 U.S. 445, 450 (1989) ("Here, the inspection was made from a helicopter, but as is the case with fixed-wing planes, *private and commercial flight [ by helicopter ] in the public airways is routine' in this country, and there is no indication that such flights are unheard of in Pasco County, Florida' (quoting Ciraolo )). Indeed, in Riley, Justice O'Connor, whose concurrence was necessary to the judgment, pointed out: *11 Ciraolo's expectation of privacy was unreasonable not because the airplane was operating where it had a "right to be, but because public air travel at 1,000 feet is a sufficiently routine part of modern life that it is unreasonable for persons on the ground to expect that their curtilage will not be observed from the air at that altitude.. If the public rarely, if ever, travels overhead at such altitudes, the observation cannot be said to be from a vantage point generally used by the public and Riley cannot be said to have "knowingly expose[d]" his greenhouse to public view. 488 U.S. at 453, 455; see also id. at 467 (Blackmun, J., dissenting) (explaining five justices agreed "the reasonableness of Riley's expectation depends, in large measure, on the frequency of nonpolice helicopter flights at an altitude of 400 feet').. The Supreme Court re-affirmed this approach in Bond v. United States, 529 U.S. 334 (2000). There a passenger on a bus traveling to Arkansas from California had placed his soft luggage in the overhead storage area above his seat. During a routine stop at an off- border immigration checkpoint in Sierra Blanca, Texas, a Border Patrol agent squeezed. the luggage in order to determine whether it contained drugs and thus detected a brick of what turned out to be methamphetamine. The defendant argued the agent had defeated his reasonable expectation of privacy, and the Government argued his expectation his bag would not be squeezed was unreasonable because he had exposed it to the public. The Court responded: [A] bus passenger clearly expects that his bag may be handled. He does not expect that other passengers or bus employees will, as a matter of course, feel the bag in an exploratory manner. But this is exactly what the agent did here. We therefore hold that the agent's physical manipulation of petitioner's bag violated the Fourth Amendment. 14 TTUOTD 0070S5
OCR quality for this page
Community corrections
First editor: none yet Last editor: none yet
No user corrections yet.
Comments
Document-wide discussion. Follow the Community Standards.
No comments on this document yet.
Bottom Reader Ad Slot
Bottom Reader Ad Slot placeholder
If you would like to support SpookStack without paying out of pocket, please consider allowing advertising cookies. It helps cover hosting costs and keeps the archive free to browse. You can change this choice at any time.

Continue Exploring

Use the strongest next step for this document: continue reading, jump to the topic hub, or move into the matching agency collection.
Continue Reading at Page 20
Jump straight to page 20 of 32.
Reader
fbi-use-of-global-postioning-system-gps-tracking — Part 02
Stay inside fbi-use-of-global-postioning-system-gps-tracking with another closely related document.
Topic
FBI Documents & FOIA Archive
Open the FBI agency landing page for stronger archive context.
FBI
fbi-use-of-global-postioning-system-gps-tracking Topic Hub
See the topic overview, related documents, and linked subtopics.
Hub

Agency Collection

This document also belongs in the FBI Documents & FOIA Archive landing page, which is the stronger starting point for agency-level browsing and for searches focused on FBI records.
FBI Documents & FOIA Archive
Open the agency landing page for introduction text, topic links, and more FBI documents.
FBI

Explore This Archive Cluster

This document belongs to the General archive hub and the more specific fbi-use-of-global-postioning-system-gps-tracking topic page. Use these hub pages when you want the broader collection context, linked subtopics, and more documents around the same archive thread.
letter bureau
Related subtopics
John Murtha
57 documents · 1471 known pages
Subtopic
Sen Joseph Joe Mccarthy
42 documents · 2653 known pages
Subtopic
D B Cooper
41 documents · 13789 known pages
Subtopic
Kansas City Massacre
38 documents · 5300 known pages
Subtopic
Black Panther Party
36 documents · 3066 known pages
Subtopic
Malcolm X
36 documents · 3932 known pages
Subtopic