In his May Illinois Bar Journal article, “’Searching’ for an Answer,” Christian Ketter recounts a decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit concerning whether evidence discovered from pressing the remote key fob of a defendant’s car should be suppressed. Ketter assesses this case, as well as others, ruling that using a key fob to locate a vehicle is not a search, and is more like a binary “on-the-spot” field or dog-sniff test that only detects the presence or absence of a thing.

But the analogy may have its limits, Ketter writes. For example, the U.S. Supreme Court has relied on such “binary analysis” in various search-related cases but has yet to apply it in a case involving a key fob or similar location technology.

 Read the May IBJ article, “Searching” for an Answer.