DES MOINES, Iowa — A Clive man was arrested Dec. 7 after allegedly stalking a woman with the help of an Apple AirTag, a tracking device intended to help locate misplaced keys and other objects.
According to court documents, Carl Shawver allegedly left the tags on a vehicle belonging to a woman he claimed was his wife, though he had never been married to the woman in question.
But what are the laws surrounding the use of this tracking tech?
Under Iowa law, it's considered a serious misdemeanor to place a GPS tracker on another person or object to track them without a legitimate purpose for doing so. But that's not the case everywhere — for example, in Indiana, there's actually no restrictions on their use.
"A woman used an air tag [in Indiana] to stalk her ex and ended up running over him with a car. But this is really new technology, Apple's work on Bluetooth," said Doug Kouns, CEO of Veracity IRR, a corporate investigation and research firm.
According to a report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, approximately 3.4 million Americans dealt with stalking in 2019. Among them, 80% of reports involved some sort of technology, and 14% involved the use of a GPS tracker, specifically.
There are some anti-stalking countermeasures built into these systems. For example, iPhones should notify you if an unregistered AirTag is in your proximity for too long. And the tag itself should being making noise if it gets too far away from the owner.
But Kouns said it's not a perfect solution.
"We played with one of these last week when the issue came up. And it's not a very loud noise. So you know, if it's hidden under the backseat of your car or something like that, I don't think you're gonna hear it," Kouns said.
Kouns told Local 5 that there are plenty of ways the tech is helpful in his work, such as monitoring if a person is breaking a restraining order. But he worries that the law isn't keeping up with the rapidly-changing tech.
"There's got to be a better balance between its mission, how it's being used, and how it can be used for good," he said.
Apple is currently being sued by two women alleging that AirTags were used to help stalk them and that Apple ignored warnings from advocates about the risks the technology posed. The lawsuit was filed in San Francisco, with the women seeking monetary damages in the case.