Hi Outoftheorg,
I remember conversations like this when I was a child. All the aprehension about some new tactic the police were using and how this would result in us losing all of our rights and all. The constitution was being destroyed. The police would crash into the houses of innocent people and all. This was 55 / 60 yrs ago. It never happened.
Other than your general impression, you fail to cite even a single specific instance where this is true, or where the US Supreme Court did such things.
As technology grows the criminals will use this to continue their illegal acts. The police will have to step up their technology to keep up. The use of a dog to sniff the air around a car, where a driver is unusually nervous or showing signs of fear is hardly an act of invasion of privacy.
Yes it is an invasion. Being nervous is not a crime. being nervous is natural, especially where a person is not experienced with the police.
If so we would have to stop all the police from giving a sobriety test to a driver, because the cop smelled liquor on the drivers breath or maybe he slured his speach.
No. Driving is not a right, nor has it even been. Being searched without a warrant is a right, and it was just taken away. I could care less about the sleeze-bag druggie they caught ... I do care about the dangerous precedant, as it erodes an important right.
This line of thought remindes me of the jw's always preaching the world is going to hell and we will all die.
There is no correlation to JWs whatsoever. Such a reference is rather a false "ad hominem" argument. JWs are weird little a cult. Our system of government is not a cult ... but with such erosions over time, it can be corrupted ... history has proven time and again how corruption can ruin societies. Germany went from being a democratic society to a full bloen Nazi state in about twelve years. That is a reality that can happen to us if we are not vigilent.
This court decision does not change the 4th amendment it still stands and can be used as a defence in court.
You are living in fantasy land my friend. This decision does erode the 4th Amendment, because now the police can always argue they felt suspecious, and so started searching ... without a warrant, and then cite this case precedant. Any 4th Amendment defense is meaningless. It is also fact that some states have eroded the same right ... for example, a few years ago, the State of Oregon said that suspecion was enough to search, and a warrant was not necessary.
If we are not doing illegal acts, what do we have to fear is a legitimate question.
That is the same old argument use to justify anything. Then, why was the 4th Amendment put there in the first place? It was to protect we the people, as the boss of our servant, the goverment, from abusing us ... or have you forgotten your history?
Jim Whitney
