Student Says He Found FBI Tracking Device on Car

Oct. 9, 2010— -- A 20-year-old college student in California said he was shocked to discover he has been followed by the FBI when earlier this week he found a GPS tracker placed underneath his car.

Yasir Afifi, a half-Egyptian, half-American Muslim and U.S. citizen, said he was having the oil changed on his car last Sunday at a Santa Clara, Calif., auto shop when he noticed a wire and the black device underneath the automobile as it was being raised.

"I was born here in Santa Clara, I just turned 20 last August. I'm a sales manager, we sell laptops and I'm a full-time student," Afifi told ABC News station KGO-TV in San Francisco.

Afifi, the son of a prominent Muslim community leader who travels frequently to Egypt and the Middle East, said he took apart the GPS device, which was stuck underneath the belly of the car with a magnet, and showed it his friend.

The friend photographed the device and posted images of it on Reddit.com, a user-generated news site, asking if it meant that the government was following them, Afifi said.

A reader of that website responded that the device is an Orion Guardian ST820 tracking device, which is only sold to authorities, Afifi's lawyer said.

Two days after discovering the tracking device Afifi said he was stopped and questioned by FBI agents and Santa Clara police officers as he left his Santa Clara apartment complex.

According to Afifi, the FBI agent asked him a series of questions including whether he had been to Yemen for any type of training and whether he knows anyone "extreme or abnormal" or who who has been posting anything online that they shouldn't be.

Afifi said he answered "no" to all of the agent's questions, before he was asked about the device.

"He goes, 'Where is the device you located under your vehicle?' I didn't even answer that, I just asked him, 'Did you guys put it there?' and he goes, 'Yeah,'" Afifi said.