Bill regulating use of GPS tracking devices sent to House

A bill that would make it illegal to use increasingly accessible GPS tracking devices to monitor the movements of others is on its way to the floor of the state’s House of Delegates.

House Bill 807, sponsored by Del. Joe T. May, R-Loudoun, would make it a Class 3 misdemeanor (punishable by a fine of up to $500) to use a tracking device “through intentionally deceptive means and without consent” to keep track of someone’s whereabouts.

“You have to know about it, and you have to agree to it,” May said today, shortly before his bill sailed out of the House Science and Technology Committee on a 14-1 vote.

The legislation comes with the proliferation of spy-like GPS devices, which are already widely available online for a couple hundred dollars, and soon will be in big box stores. The cigarette box-sized devices are easily attached to vehicles.  

May has been working on the bill for two years after being approached by a constituent who was going through a nasty divorce. The man had taken his car to a mechanic, who discovered electronic tracking device that had been installed by his estranged wife.

After taking the issue to the police, the man was surprised to learn that it was not already against the law.

May’s bill would exempt police, judicial, probation and parole officers. It would also not apply to parents tracking their teenagers’ whereabouts or adults monitoring the movements of incapacitated adults, like elderly people with Alzheimer’s.

Del. Scott A. Surovell, D-Fairfax, voted against the bill after unsuccessfully attempting to amend it to allow someone to track their own vehicle under any circumstances.

Last week, Surovell noted that he and his wife have an au pair who drives their vehicle.

“Sometimes I wonder where she’s going,” he said, today adding, “I do think as the owner of a vehicle that I should be able to know where my car’s going.” 

May noted that the owner of a vehicle certainly has that right so long as they inform the person driving the vehicle, noting that the intent was to prevent tracking people, not cars.

“Vehicles don’t move themselves around,” May said. “We don’t care much about cars.”

(This has been a breaking news update. Read more in tomorrow's Richmond Times-Dispatch.)