According to a recent CBS news report, a California senate bill, SB57, requires sex offenders who remove or tamper with their GPS tracking devices to spend a mandatory 6-months in jail. The bill comes in response to the increase in monitoring of the state’s offenders via GPS due to a law passed two years ago to relieve prison overpopulation, which was designed to send offenders to jail instead of prison. But, due to overcrowding in jails as well, some offenders spend little or no time behind bars, and instead are released to home and monitored via GPS tracking bracelets.
According to a recent report, a North Carolina State University study recently monitored, via GPS tracking, the activity of six free-range cheetahs residing in a wildlife park in Africa to study if high speed is the only factor in the animals’ ability to successfully hunt prey. It turns out that, while cheetahs have the ability to outrun their prey, successful hunting is a savvy combination of speed, maneuvering skills, and positioning. The report compared the cheetahs’ behavior, monitored by GPS tracking collars, to the movements of a race car, or an initial burst of speed followed by stealthy movements and navigating turns.
A Connecticut program designed to provide early warning to domestic violence victims when their assailants get too close may be expanding. Currently available in the cities of Hartford, Danielson, and Bridgeport, victims receive automated alerts via GPS tracking software and a GPS tracking ankle bracelet when an assailant comes within 5,000 to 2,500 feet. The program costs $22 per day per offender, which adds up to $2 million per year. Approximately one-third of Connecticut court cases are tied to domestic violence. Read more on this story.
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Have you ever tried driving a 12-foot box truck under an 11-foot bridge? If you have, then you know that it doesn’t work and that it can also create huge, expensive messes, not to mention injuries. According the Boston Herald, officials are sending heads up notifications to GPS tracking companies such as Garmin and TomTom to update GPS tracking software to include warnings for low bridges and overpasses.
The effort is to prevent accidents among new Boston drivers, especially college students and their parents, who will likely be heavily relying on their GPS tracking systems to make it to campus neighborhoods. As one might imagine, the problems created include damage to bridges, traffic delays, and possible injuries.
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A New Jersey man who installed a GPS jammer on his vehicle in hopes of outsmarting his bosses has instead been fined $32,000. Turns out his GPS jamming device also interfered with the testing of GPS tracking systems on planes at an airport near his location. GPS jammers (illegal in the United States) are devices which block GPS signals from being sent to or from a vehicle.
Here’s a link to a previous post on GPS tracking for employees.
Here’s another bit of GPS tracking news…after police suspected a pair of Michigan men of breaking into homes and stealing valuables, they obtained a search warrant to place a covert tracking device on the suspect vehicle. Some time later, the vehicle was determined to have been at another home which had also been burglarized. Utilizing the vehicle tracking device and GPS tracking software, authorities were able to apprehend the suspects (after one fled), who later confessed to a string of burglaries. Both men have since been sentenced to prison.
Source: http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/07/gps_tracker_leads_to_prison_ti.html
Scientists may soon be using GPS tracking technology to monitor and track hurricanes, according to a recent report published in Radio Journal. By utilizing a GPS tracking receiver in hurricane hunter aircrafts to measure disruptions in the sea and then comparing the data to that which is received from GPS tracking satellites, scientists can determine the strength of a storm, including wind speeds accurate within 11 mph. Using GPS tracking systems to track hurricanes may also be more cost effective than dropsondes, tubes containing scientific measuring devices dropped from planes directly into hurricanes, which cost more than $700 dollars each. However, GPS tracking for hurricanes is only effective for hurricanes at sea, not those which have already made landfall, and is somewhat less accurate than current methods.
India just launched one of seven satellites as part of its IRNSS positioning system which is due to be completed in 2016. While U.S. initiated GPS tracking satellites cover India, the new system will provide more options to those within 1,500 miles of the mainland of India. The system is designed to be accurate within 20 meters or less.
Photo: Engadget
This is a quick update to our previous post detailing the New York court decision to allow limited, but warrantless GPS tracking of government employees. In a dissenting opinion, the controversial decision has been called a “dangerous precedent”. The decision was made as a result of Cunningham vs. the New York Department of Labor, where a government employee was tracked on his off time for the purpose of investigation whether or not he was honestly reporting his time spent on the job. Government actions (employee GPS tracking) in this case were deemed unreasonable by the court.
Yesterday, the New York Daily News reported that New York’s top court has decided in favor of limited GPS tracking government employees. But the decision to allow some use of tracking devices, related to a 2008 misconduct case against a Labor Department official, didn’t come without clarification of what the court considers to be overstepping employee privacy. Drawing a fine line between acceptable and excessive, the court ruled that while the government can utilize vehicle tracking during hours they claim to be working, after hours and vacation time are off limits. With the court citing that employees have a “reasonable expectation” of privacy, and that government employers should exhaust other options before resorting to GPS tracking, the decision is considered significant in it’s challenge to the government’s previous stance that around-the-clock GPS tracking was acceptable. Tell us what you think about this decision!
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