Many media outlets are currently focusing on the case of Michael Cunningham, a staff director and head of organization development at the New York State Department of Labor, who was fired from his job after government investigators used a GPS tracking device to prove he was stealing from New York tax payers by misrepresenting his work schedule.
How in fact did a GPS tracker prove that he was falsifying work and attendance records? The answer is most probably by installing a special type of GPS tracker that can be covertly placed beneath a vehicle. One such device is the Quantrac 8200 real time tracking device. Popular among law enforcement for exactly these types of operations, the Quantrac 8200 is tiny and discreet and features an excellent, long-lived battery life. Because the device has a magnetic exterior, the unit can easily and quickly be attached to any metal surface underneath the vehicle.
It is also possible, although less likely, that the New York State agency that carried out the investigation used a passive GPS tracking device. While these units can not transmit their location information in real time, they can track and store the whereabouts of a mobile asset, such as an employee’s vehicle in this case. The LandAirSea Tracking Key would be an example of such a device. It can log up to 100 hours worth of a vehicle’s traveling data in its on-board flash memory. That information can then be later retrieved by connecting the passive GPS logger directly to a computer.
Now that we know how the New York State authorities used real time or passive GPS tracking technology to prove that Michael Cunningham failed to accurately report his work schedule, we’ll have to wait and see how the New York State judges rule on the constitutionality of such government tracking.
{ 2 trackbacks }