Spy Threat

When a New Jersey woman fitted a GPS tracking device to her husband’s car last year, she got a lot more than she bargained for. The device, a LandAirSea GPS Tracking Key, is half the size of a cigarette pack, waterproof and comes with a strong, magnetic mount. For as long as its batteries last, it will record driving speed on a second-by-second basis, as well as the location, time and date of every stop the vehicle makes. A set of batteries can easily last two weeks. Suspecting her husband of infidelity, she did not mention the device and by any definition was clearly engaging in an invasion of his privacy.

Days later, the husband was involved in what appeared to be a tragic accident. While taking family babysitter home, they stopped to look at some horses from a countryt road. George Ford, Jr. of Piscataway, NJ, told police that he accidentally ran over the 12-year old girl as he turned his truck around to leave. However, once investigators for the Chenango County Sheriff’s Department found the GPS device, a different story emerged. Continue reading…

Sherriff Thomas Loughren said that the GPS tracking data proved that Ford was with the girl for three hours before he killed her. "This evidence is really unusual in a homocide case," Loughren said. "But, in this particular case, it’s crucial. Without this evidence from the GPS Tracking Key, we would have no case." Lacking that evidence, George Ford, Jr, could only have been charged with reckless endangerment.

Devices similar to the LandAirSea Tracking Key are commonly used in trucks to provide location information to dispatchers, or in rental fleets to assist in theft recovery. Past challenges to the use of GPS-based devices that record or transmit usage and location data have raised an entirely new segment of privacy considerations that are far from settled at this point.

A similar product, called GPS-Snitch form Blackline GPS Inc., of Calgary, Canada, has transmission capability that allows it to be tracked with an Internet application on your computer or web-capable cell phone. Intended as a security device, the GPS-Snitch can send you a text message or email once it has moved outside a specified perimeter. Data that has been recorded can also be exported to Google Earth format and replayed in a virtual environment that is enhanced with satellite imagery.

Read the rest of this story at UberDrive Magazine.