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
