According to its proponents, the GPS Act sets forth "a legal framework designed to give government agencies, commercial entities and private citizens clear guidelines for when and how geolocation information can be accessed and used.
"[1] Advocates drafted the bill to address controversies surrounding prior incidents in which police had attached GPS devices to suspects' vehicles without warrants and to set a legal precedent for such tracking in the future.
[5] In reply, the U.S. Department of Justice argued that an individual has "no reasonable expectation of privacy" in his or her movements around public streets, and that legislation requiring certain standards for warrants would "severely impede" law enforcement officials in their work.
[7] The Supreme Court justices voted unanimously that the attachment of a GPS device on a vehicle and its monitoring, even on public streets, constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment.
[9] If passed, the GPS Act would require probable cause and an accompanying warrant before government agencies could obtain private geolocational information on an individual, either through a mobile device or by the placement of a tracking bug.
Taking a strong stance on consumer rights, the bill would further forbid private businesses from sharing customer location data without explicit consent of the individual.