Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wouldn't surprise me if this was a one-off job. All those joints were hand-soldered, which is something you don't do unless you're the tiniest of tiny vendors, and someone who really didn't want to get people looking at it would have used something other than tape to wrap it up.
Government surveillance equipment is low volume and high margin, so hand assembly makes sense. The tape also makes sense as a way of disguising the device. A shiny plastic box wouldn't look like it belongs on the car, but most cars have wiring harnesses covered with black tape.
The more I look at what else is out there in vehicle tracking, the weirder this thing becomes. Other tracking devices that people have discovered [1] have been much more professionally assembled, with epoxy blobs coating interesting chips and everything. Additionally, fleet telemetric devices that are battery powered and use cell signals and gps also look a lot more professional than this, with plastic casings, neat soldering jobs, etc. This feels like an odd amateur tracking device of some sort, which IMO makes it even more interesting than a government tracker.
[1] http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2011/11/GPS-Tr...
