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Representative Clowney presents bill to prohibit nonconsensual tracking devices; survivor urges passage
Summary
Representative Clowney presented a bill to add nonconsensual placement or use of location-tracking devices to Arkansas’s harassment statute; a survivor testified she found a tracker under her car and urged lawmakers to act.
Representative Clowney introduced House Bill 1641 and called forward Erin Wadley, a constituent who said an abusive ex had placed a tracking device on her car. Wadley said she discovered the device after hearing a scraping noise and, when the device was removed, found it had been transmitting her location without her knowledge. She told the Judiciary Committee the incident propelled her to law school and to research the issue; she and the sponsor said Arkansas lacks a specific statute addressing nonconsensual placement of tracking devices.
Clowney and witnesses told the committee they modeled the measure on other states’ statutes (testimony noted 27 states have laws addressing nonconsensual tracking) and proposed adding the conduct to the harassment code. The bill includes an existing harassment code’s phrase “without good cause” to allow prosecutors discretion; committee members asked for clarification of that phrase’s contours.
Representative Shepherd asked whether the bill would criminalize commonly shared phone-location services (for example, location-sharing apps or shared accounts) and whether revoking consent would affect culpability. Sponsor and witnesses said voluntary location-sharing (for example, apps or shared family-locator services) would generally constitute consent; revoking consent would remove consent and could support a charge where an unlawful tracking device continued to transmit data.
Representative Tosh asked whether private investigators or licensed law-enforcement personnel would be affected; the sponsor noted the statute includes affirmative defenses and exemptions, and testimony said law enforcement and authorized investigators are covered by those defenses. A citizen witness described working on related cases and said she sees this as a common problem for abuse survivors.
The committee heard limited questions and no final vote was recorded in the transcript. The measure received emotional testimony from a survivor and drew technical questions from committee members about consent, reasonable uses and statutory exemptions. The bill remained under consideration at the session’s close of the excerpt.
