Cheese danish shipping, warrantless GPS trackers, and a border doctrine challenge

Enlarge / The border crossing at Port Huron, Michigan, as seen in 2015. (credit: Ken Lund / Flickr)

At the end of August, a federal judge in Riverside, California made a potentially landmark decision for border privacy advocates-finding that it is unconstitutional for federal agents to warrantlessly install GPS tracking devices onto a truck entering the United States from Canada.

In the grand scheme, the decision stands in the face of a controversial but standing legal idea called "the border doctrine." The doctrine's concept is that warrants are not required to conduct a search at the border in the name of national sovereignty.

And in this particular incident-a case called United States v. Slavco Ignjatov et al. that allegedly involves Starbucks cheese danishes and a trafficking organization that sounds straight out of Breaking Bad-the ruling could be a major victory for defendants as it would suppress any evidence obtained through the use of the warrantless GPS tracker.

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