Disappeared News

by Larry Geller

The following is a snippet from an ACLU fact sheet about the latest erosion of civil liberties. As you will see, all of Hawaii is affected.

The problem

• Normally under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the American people are not generally subject to random and arbitrary stops and searches. 
• The border, however, has always been an exception.  There, the longstanding view is that the normal rules do not apply.  For example the authorities do not need a warrant or probable cause to conduct a “routine search.” 
• But what is “the border”?  According to the government, it  is a 100-mile wide strip that wraps around the “external boundary” of the United States. 
• As a result of this claimed authority, individuals who are far away from the border, American citizens traveling from one place in America to another, are being stopped and harassed in ways that our Constitution does not permit.

(thanks to the Progressive Review)

Why should we care? The ACLU sums it up thusly:

If the current generation of Americans does not challenge this creeping (and sometimes galloping) expansion of federal powers over the individual through the rationale of "border protection," we are not doing our part to keep alive the rights and freedoms that we inherited, and will soon find that we have lost some or all of their right to go about their business, and travel around inside their own country, without interference from the authorities.

That's why.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 10/23/2008 07:34:00 PM