Georgia GPS Tracking Laws: Is It Legal to Put a Tracker on a Car? (2026)

If you are wondering whether you can put a GPS tracker on someone's car in Georgia, the honest answer is that Georgia never wrote a general law about GPS devices. That does not mean tracking is legal. Prosecutors reach for the stalking statute instead, and it fits GPS tracking surprisingly well. And planting a tracker on the car of someone who holds a protective order against you is its own felony.

This guide explains how Georgia law actually treats vehicle trackers, who can legally use one, what the penalties look like, and what to do if you find a tracker on your own car.

Is It Legal to Put a GPS Tracker on a Car in Georgia?

It depends on whose car it is and why you are tracking it. Georgia never passed a general electronic tracking device law. The one code section that names GPS devices, O.C.G.A. 16-11-62(8), is narrow: it applies only when the vehicle's owner or lessee already holds a protective order against the person planting the device.

That gap does not create a free pass. Putting a tracker on a vehicle you do not own, without the owner's consent, exposes you to Georgia's stalking statute. The law specifically criminalizes "placing under surveillance," and Georgia courts treat electronic monitoring as exactly that.

Putting a tracker on your own vehicle is legal. Tracking a car titled solely to someone else, like an ex, a dating partner, or a neighbor, is where criminal liability starts.

There is also a constitutional layer. In United States v. Jones (2012), the U.S. Supreme Court held that when the government attaches a GPS device to a car, that is a Fourth Amendment search, which generally requires a warrant. Jones limits police, not private citizens, but it shows how seriously courts treat covert vehicle tracking.

Georgia's Stalking Law and "Placing Under Surveillance" (O.C.G.A. 16-5-90)

Georgia's stalking statute is the workhorse for GPS tracking cases. Under O.C.G.A. 16-5-90, a person commits stalking when they follow, place under surveillance, or contact another person without consent "for the purpose of harassing and intimidating" them.

Each piece of that matters for trackers:

• Places under surveillance. A GPS unit reporting someone's location around the clock is surveillance in its plainest sense. You do not have to physically follow anyone.
• Without consent. If the person being tracked never agreed, this element is met.
• Harassing and intimidating. The statute defines this as a knowing and willful course of conduct directed at a specific person that causes emotional distress by placing them in reasonable fear for their safety or the safety of an immediate family member, establishes a pattern of harassing and intimidating behavior, and serves no legitimate purpose.

That last element is the prosecution's real burden. A tracker planted by a jealous ex, a former spouse mid-divorce, or someone the victim has already tried to cut off fits the pattern courts look for. Context like prior threats, repeated unwanted contact, or showing up wherever the victim goes makes the case stronger.

A first offense is a misdemeanor. A second or subsequent conviction is a felony punishable by 1 to 10 years in prison. Judges can also order psychological evaluation and impose permanent restraining conditions at sentencing.

If a protective order, restraining order, bond condition, or probation term already prohibits contact, tracking the protected person becomes aggravated stalking under O.C.G.A. 16-5-91. That is a felony carrying 1 to 10 years and a fine up to $10,000, even for a first offense.

What Georgia's Surveillance Statute Does and Doesn't Cover (O.C.G.A. 16-11-62)

Georgia does have a device surveillance law, O.C.G.A. 16-11-62. Paragraph (2) makes it illegal to use a device to observe, photograph, or record the activities of another person "in any private place and out of public view" without consent.

Read that language carefully. A car driving on public streets is not in a private place out of public view. Anyone standing on the sidewalk can see where it goes. Because of that language, paragraph (2) generally does not reach a GPS tracker logging a vehicle's movements on public roads.

There is a second and independent reason paragraph (2) does not fit. It reaches only surveillance carried out "through the use of any device," and O.C.G.A. 16-11-60(1) defines a device, for this part of the code, as an instrument for overhearing, recording, intercepting, or transmitting sounds, or for observing, photographing, videotaping, recording, or transmitting visual images.

A GPS tracker captures neither sound nor images. It reports coordinates. So it is not a device under this part at all, and paragraph (2) fails on the definition before the private place question is ever reached.

That definitional gap is why the legislature had to write a standalone paragraph in 2022. Instead of leaning on the defined term, it names a "global positioning system monitoring device, or any other electronic monitoring device."

This is why the stalking statute, not the surveillance statute, is the charge that matters in most Georgia GPS cases. The surveillance law is built for hidden cameras in homes, bathrooms, and other genuinely private spaces, which we cover in our Georgia recording laws guide.

There is one GPS-specific exception, and it sits inside this same statute. Georgia's SB 10 (2022) added the GPS provision to 16-11-62, now codified at paragraph (8). It is unlawful to intentionally and in a clandestine manner place a GPS monitoring device, or any other electronic monitoring device, on a motor vehicle owned or leased by another person without consent, when that person holds a family violence, dating violence, or criminal case protective order, or an out-of-state protective order, against the one planting the device. Unlike stalking, no harassing purpose needs to be proven. The clandestine placement alone is a felony under 16-11-69, punishable by 1 to 5 years.

One myth worth killing: several aggregator sites claim Georgia's SB 539 (2022) regulates GPS tracking. It does not. SB 539 amended the same statute to address photographing and recording patients in county-operated health care facilities. The 2022 bill that actually wrote GPS trackers into Georgia law was SB 10. SB 539 matters here only for numbering: it inserted the patient photography paragraph at (7), which pushed SB 10's GPS provision down to (8).

Who Can Legally Track a Vehicle in Georgia

Ownership and consent do most of the work here.

• Your own car. Legal. You can install a tracker on a vehicle titled to you, including one you lend to others, though tracking a specific person to harass them can still create stalking exposure.
• Co-owned vehicles, including spouses. If both names are on the title, a co-owner can generally consent to a tracker on the jointly owned vehicle. This comes up constantly in divorces. Be careful: judges in family court take a dim view of covert tracking, and using the data to follow, confront, or intimidate your spouse can still satisfy the stalking elements.
• Your minor child's car. Parents who own the vehicle their teenager drives can track it.
• Fleet and business vehicles. Companies can track vehicles they own.
• Lenders and lessors. Trackers installed under a financing or lease agreement you signed are contractual, not covert.
• Private investigators. Georgia gives PIs no exemption from the stalking statute. A licensed investigator who plants a tracker on a car their client does not own takes the same legal risk as anyone else.

What you cannot do is track a vehicle titled solely to another adult without their consent. There is no boyfriend, girlfriend, or "we live together" exception.

Can My Employer Track My Car in Georgia?

Georgia has no statute regulating employer GPS tracking, so the default rules apply.

If you drive a company-owned vehicle, your employer can track it, with or without telling you. The company owns the asset, and Georgia law gives owners broad rights over their own property. Most employers disclose tracking anyway in handbooks or fleet policies.

Tracking an employee's personal vehicle is different. The employer does not own the car, so a covert tracker invites the same stalking analysis as anyone else, plus a civil invasion of privacy claim. Careful Georgia employers get written consent before putting any tracking app or device on a worker's personal car or phone, and limit tracking to work hours.

AirTags and Item Trackers in Georgia

Apple AirTags, Tiles, and similar Bluetooth trackers are legally identical to GPS units in Georgia. The stalking statute cares about the surveillance, not the technology. Dropping an AirTag in someone's bag or magnet-mounting one under their bumper to monitor where they go is the same "placing under surveillance" conduct.

Modern phones help victims here. iPhones and Android devices alert users when an unknown AirTag is traveling with them, and those alerts have become evidence in stalking prosecutions nationwide.

Crossing state lines does not help the tracker either. The federal stalking statute, 18 U.S.C. 2261A, criminalizes using any electronic device or service to engage in a course of conduct that places a person in reasonable fear or causes substantial emotional distress, including interactive monitoring across state lines.

Penalties for Illegal Tracking in Georgia

Stalking convictions also carry collateral consequences in Georgia family courts, where tracking evidence routinely affects custody and divorce outcomes.

Civil Lawsuits and Protective Orders

Criminal charges are not the only consequence. Georgia recognizes invasion of privacy claims, including intrusion upon seclusion. A person secretly tracked by an ex, a coworker, or an investigator can sue for damages, and Georgia juries can award punitive damages for malicious conduct.

Victims can also act fast without waiting for prosecutors. O.C.G.A. 16-5-94 lets a stalking victim petition the superior court for a protective order, no arrest required. The order can ban all contact and surveillance, and once it is in place, any further tracking becomes aggravated stalking, a felony. When the order qualifies under O.C.G.A. 16-11-62(8), clandestinely planting a GPS device on the protected person's vehicle is a separate felony on top. Our guide to Georgia restraining order laws walks through the filing process step by step.

What to Do If You Find a Tracker on Your Car

1. Do not destroy it. The device is evidence, and it may carry fingerprints, a serial number, or account data that identifies who planted it.
2. Photograph it in place before touching anything. Capture where it was mounted, wiring, and any magnets or cases.
3. Call the police and ask them to document and remove it. Mention Georgia's stalking statute, O.C.G.A. 16-5-90, since some officers assume GPS tracking is unregulated here.
4. Write down your timeline. Note anyone who seemed to know your location when they should not have. That pattern supports the harassing and intimidating element.
5. Consider a stalking protective order under 16-5-94 if you suspect who did it.
6. Check your phone and accounts too. Stalkers often pair a vehicle tracker with phone location sharing, shared iCloud or Google accounts, or stalkerware apps.

If you spot a hidden camera rather than a tracker, different statutes apply. See our surveillance camera laws guide for that scenario.

For rules in other states, see our hub on GPS Tracking Laws by State. Related Georgia guides: Georgia recording laws and Georgia restraining order laws.

Sources

1. Official Code of Georgia Annotated, Georgia General Assembly (O.C.G.A. §§ 16-5-90, 16-5-91, 16-5-94, 16-11-60, 16-11-62)
2. Georgia Senate Bill 10 (2022), as signed, adding the GPS monitoring device paragraph to O.C.G.A. § 16-11-62
3. Georgia Senate Bill 539 (2022), as signed, amending O.C.G.A. § 16-11-62
4. Georgia Attorney General Official Opinion 95-17 (first offense stalking under § 16-5-90 designated a misdemeanor)
5. United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400 (2012), slip opinion
6. 18 U.S.C. § 2261A: Federal Stalking Statute

Disclaimer: This article provides general legal information about GPS tracking laws in Georgia as of June 2026. It is not legal advice. Laws change, and how they apply depends on your specific facts. Consult a licensed Georgia attorney before acting on anything you read here.

More Georgia Laws

• Georgia Dashcam Laws
• Georgia Data Privacy Laws
• Georgia Drone Laws
• Georgia Employee Monitoring Laws
• Georgia Recording Laws
• Georgia Restraining Order Laws