In the better late than never category The Daily Show takes on SOPA

In a related issue, the Supreme Court today ruled that a warrant is needed in order for police to place a GPS tracker on your vehicle.

Next we need to look at these systems now being used by police to track the movement of citizens using automated license plate scanners.

While I'm sure the MPAA and the government want to go well beyond what I think is reasonable enforcement of copyright, the more I read about the case against Megauploads, the less sympathy I have for their side.

Someone tweeted likening it to going after the postal service or UPS because someone sent a pirated DVD through the mail. From what I can tell, what they're accused of is more like someone operating a rent per hour motel and trying to say, "I just rent the rooms, I can't police my customers do," while having video cameras in the rooms and passing around names of pimps and prostitutes that use those rooms.

As far as I can tell, it didn't say that. It said that attaching and using GPS is a search and therefore 4th Amendment jurisprudence applies. Further caselaw will potentially determine when and if a warrant is required (not all searches require warrants).

The opinion explicitly mentions that it takes no position on an argument that probable cause is sufficient for planting a GPS unit without a warrant since that argument was never made in the lower courts before being argued at the Supreme Court. In practical terms I imagine it accomplishes the same thing, but technically the requirements for a warrant haven't been addressed.

Also they mention that tracking that doesn't require trespass is a different question.

But Alito gets kind of testy in his concurrence so enjoy reading it for that.