In 2010, a twenty-year-old California college student named Yasir Afifi took his car to get an oil change. While the car was being serviced, Mr. Afifi noticed a strange black box attached to the car’s underbody. Two days later, as he left his apartment complex, he was approached by a group of FBI agents who asked where he had put their tracking device which they had planted on his car.

QUESTION: What legal standing did the FBI have to plant a tracker, and how did this case influence surveillance law or public debate?

QUESTION: What legal justification did the FBI invoke? This suggests questions about warrant requirements for GPS surveillance.

Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet_ Gl…, loc. 768