Asking to have charges dismissed due to search and seizure violations is not a question of guilt or innocence. It is a question of whether the government unreasonably intruded on the suspect's privacy. Privacy rights are guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, specifically by the Fourth Amendment. With the advancement of the digital age, many new privacy issues have come to light.

On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously to restrict police use of GPS devices to track criminal suspects. The decision is one of the first to apply Fourth Amendment protections to modern surveillance technology, but the court did not explicitly go so far as to say a warrant would be necessary to partake in GPS tracking in all cases. The case was in relation to a suspected Washington, D.C., drug kingpin who was up against felony drug charges.

The court ruled that prosecutors violated the suspect's rights by attaching a GPS device to his vehicle. Prosecutors monitored him byway of the GPS device for 28 days. As a result, the man was sentenced to life in prison.

The government's view had been that tracking a suspect with GPS was no different than traditional forms of monitoring suspects.

However, the majority opinion said that the attachment of the GPS device to the car violated the suspect's protection against unreasonable search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment. Attaching a GPS device, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote, constituted a search.

Scalia's opinion did not state that a warrant would be necessary in all cases of GPS use. The ruling was limited to the use of a GPS when attached to a suspect's car, but, the decision does imply that it would not be without risk for law enforcement to utilize GPS technology in other cases without a warrant.

Source: Washington Post, "Supreme Court: Warrants needed in GPS tracking," Robert Barnes, Jan, 23, 2012