More on the destruction of the Fourth Amendment

Posted on June 5, 2013 by Michael

In case you missed it: The Supreme Court has ruled that the police can take a DNA sample from a person without probable cause, without a warrant, and without a conviction. So long as a person has been arrested for a felony, he is subject to an intrusion upon his body. It’s an overt violation of the Fourth Amendment that, given the specific arguments of the Court, will undoubtedly lead to DNA sampling for absolutely any crime for which one may be arrested, including jaywalking or running a red light.

There are incredible problems with all this. First, unlike with fingerprinting, the point of DNA sampling is not to identify a suspect. The sole point is to solve other crimes. This is the explicit intent of the state legislatures that have passed such laws. It is exactly the same as if a state legislature declared that a person’s home was automatically subject to being searched upon that person’s arrest. The police are now allowed to go on horseshit fishing expeditions.

Second, while there are often restrictions placed upon what the police are allowed to do with your DNA, that can be changed on a whim by a given state’s governing body. Moreover, do you trust the government to keep its blinders on? If you had a 100 page journal and a judge told the prosecution that it could read it but it had to stick to pages 14-17, do you really think that would happen? Of course not. Pages 1-13 and 18-100 would be absolutely scoured, regardless whether or not the information found therein could be used directly against you.

The only civil liberties decisions of the past 100 years more important than this one are Brown v Board of Education and Loving v Virginia. Every American is forever subject to suspicionless searches and seizures, less the states pass a sorely needed amendment to the constitution.

Filed under: Politics and Social, Pure bullshit, Pure Rage, Rights | Tagged: , | 7 Comments »

Thought of the day

Posted on June 4, 2013 by Michael

The Supreme Court has just ruled that police have the right to obtain DNA from those they arrest. Apparently it’s a reasonable booking procedure used to identify a suspect. Even though the identification can take weeks. And it almost always will pertain to some other crime for which the police otherwise do not have any reasonable suspicion. And it gives them access to what is normally protected medical information.

Somehow, I don’t think if the founding fathers were around today that they would be in favor of the government having access to a private citizen’s DNA without probably cause, a warrant, or a conviction.

Filed under: Misc | Tagged: , | 2 Comments »

Mainers made safer with LD415

Posted on June 1, 2013 by Michael

The citizens of Maine will become just a little bit safer with the passage of LD415:

Lawmakers in Maine are putting themselves at the forefront of efforts to curb excessive surveillance by instituting new privacy safeguards.

On Wednesday, the state House voted 113-28 in favor of legislation that would in all but exceptional cases prohibit law enforcement agencies from tracking cellphones without a warrant. If enacted, LD 415 would make Maine the first state in the country to require authorities to obtain a search warrant before tracking cellphones or other GPS-enabled devices. The law would also require that law enforcement agencies notify a person that she was tracked within three days, unless they can prove that secrecy is necessary, in which case a delay can be granted for up to 180 days. LD 415 would additionally require the publication of an annual report online detailing the number of times location data were sought by law enforcement agencies.

Here’s a good way of thinking about this: If the police were to start following people around for little to no reason whatsoever – for any thing they deem to be ‘reason enough’ – we would rightly say they’ve crossed a line; at that point they would be common criminal stalkers unfit to wear a badge. That they are able to do exactly that from a remote location doesn’t change the fact that their actions need to be checked. If they can’t get court approval, then they don’t have the right to stalk people. Because, frankly, fuck that bullshit.

LD415 isn’t yet law. It has passed in the house (113-28) and senate (20-15), but it needs to go through the senate again for procedural reasons. These numbers raise an interesting question: Who are the 43 assholes who voted against civil liberties?

Filed under: Local, Rights | Tagged: , , | Leave a comment »

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