United States v. Jones, 565 US ___, 132 S.Ct. 945 (2012)

United States v. Jones, 565 US ___, 132 S.Ct. 945 (2012), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that installing a Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking device on a vehicle and using the device to monitor the vehicle's movements constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment.

In 2005 defendant Antoine Jones was suspected of drug trafficking. Police investigators asked for and received a warrant to attach a GPS tracking device to the underside of the defendant's car but then exceeded the warrant's scope in both geography and length of time. The Supreme Court justices voted unanimously that this violated the Fourth Amendment, though they were split on the reasoning. The majority held that by installing the GPS device on the defendants car the Police had committed a trespass on private property and that the trespass constituted a per se breach of the defendant's privacy.