Our right to privacy vs. Their right to dominate
posted by The Vidiot @ 12:39 PM Permalink There's this quaint little concept called "the fourth amendment"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.I say it's a quaint concept because, over the years, it's been whittled away like a piece of balsa wood. Take these back-scatter scans that they want to install at the airports that they're now mounting in vans and scanning our homes and cars with:
Though Reiss admits that the systems “to a large degree will penetrate clothing,” he points to the lack of features in images of humans like the one shown at right, far less detail than is obtained from the airport scans. “From a privacy standpoint, I’m hard-pressed to see what the concern or objection could be,” he says.He's 'hard-pressed'? Seriously?
Blanket searches are unreasonable, however 'evenhanded' they may be, in the traditional criminal law enforcement context. See, e.g., Ybarra v. Illinois, 444 U.S. 85, 91-2, 92 n.4 ('79) (invalidating a blanket patdown search of all patrons in a tavern, even though there was probable cause to search the bartender and the premises). The ill that the Fourth Amendment prevents is not merely the arbitrariness of police discretion to single out individuals for attention, but also the unwarranted domination and control of the citizenry through fear of baseless but 'evenhanded' general police searches.THAT's what it's all about: Domination and control of the citizenry. They aren't going to find much of anything because there isn't much of anything to find. They know it. We know it. The whole charade is all about intimidating people, making people scared. Hell, there are things even I won't say over the phone, not because of anything nefarious, but because I don't want any senseless bells to go off down at NSA headquarters (And not that I think they're listening to me specifically. I mean, that's ridiculous, but they do have screening software for email and for phone lines that sets off alarms when certain combinations of words are used. Google Carnivore and Echelon and see what you find.)
Labels: fourth amendment, police state
3 Comments:
As Bill so insightfgully pointed out in an earlier post, an elective Federal post in Congress was originally meant for only one term. upon finishing a term, the former elected official then went back to the region that elected him in order to re-establish residency ... while also benefitting or suffering from whatever economic conditions he helped produce.
Now? Congresscritters are as likely to live sequestered either inside some opulent, quasi-safe house located somwhere around Babylon on the Patomic, or otherwise occasionally residing safely ensconced behind some anticeptically maintained, gated sub-community where they were supposedly elected somewhere in their "home" state.
They now come to their "job" in Washington, are precisely instructed by their branch of the Capitalist Political Party on how they are to perform their duties, and ultimately who -- when the time is ripe -- is supposed to momentarily resign in disgrace.
Actually they are very-well kept slaves who play their parts, produce the political theater, and are then opulently billeted to their prospective retirement communities to ultimately be entertained by whatever current political theater is being produced.
Actually "serving the public" is just a phrase they use, but never really understand.
DanD
This is what I find most disturbing: At police academies everywhere young recruits were all taught "come-along holds,' "submission holds," effective use of their batons, and to always call for backup, if necessary, as the combined weight of the officers would bring down anyone but the Incredible Hulk and, with the subject in control on the ground it was a simple matter indeed to cuff 'em up and book 'em Dano.
You of those tools used to be the "choke hold' where the officer's one arm wrapped around the neck of the subject applied pressure simultaneously to the carotid artery and the jugular vein which very quickly would render the subject unconscious. The problem with this hold, however, was that if an officer was really pissed off and blocked these arteries for just a few seconds too long brain damage or death could result, so they wisely removed the choke hold from their training and forbade it's use except in a genuine hairy-scary emergency, like when an officer was getting his ass kicked by a much larger subject.
The come-along holds were and always will be effective, the officer simply applies the hold and the subject must go along or he is the only one who will be hurt, Most common of these is the officer placing his arm underneath the subject's arm, grabbing his hand and bending it down very quickly 'til it hurt and then telling the subject to "come with me," thus becoming a "come along hold." If the subject violently tried to wrench away his broken wrist would remind him that he must cooperate of be hurt even more severely from his own effort to escape.
I don't know when or why they stopped teaching officers self-defense (if they did) and making them work at it until they became proficient. Those that didn't become proficient either didn't graduate or worked a desk job for his own safety.
With two black belts in Karate I was already thoroughly trained in subduing a subject with no or minimal harm to that subject.
Many, many officers today should have been weeded out and fired from police duties, those that: beat people insensible with clubs with several other officers joining in, those so afraid or stupid enough to hold guns to subject's heads where it is entirely too easy to blow someone away "accidentally." Those that engage in high speed pursuit where it clearly is adverse to public safety, and those that reach for their guns just because someone walks up to them for some innocuous reason; it is indicative of fear and a lack of confidence in the officer's training.
Now they have the Taser, which they will use at the drop of a hat. I saw three officers walk up behind a seventy year-old man who was out of his set at a ballgame cause he wanted to talk to some people down in front. After the briefest order by the cops to return to his seat they dropped him with a Taser. An 84 year-old lady ws Tased at a traffic stop when she got out of her vehicle. Time after time you hear of officers tasing someone three, four, five times. Why? They couldn't handcuff him the first time he went down? I'm all for stun guns, they don't shoot darts into the skin and the officer is close enough to cuff up a subject immediately, though there were still the horror stories of prisoners being stun-gunned five, ten, fifteen times.
Cops today are cowards, using the tools of cowards, and using those tools repeatedly without need, other than "contempt of cop."
It's tragic
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