Pubdate: Fri, 19 Dec 2003
Source: Valley Morning Star (TX)
Copyright: 2003 Valley Morning Star
Contact: http://www.valleystar.com/letters.php
Website: http://www.valleystar.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/584
Author: Mike Perez

HIGH COURT CARRIES OUT WAR ON PRIVACY

The systematic shredding of the Fourth Amendment's protection of personal 
privacy in the name of the war on drugs proceeds apace. The latest example 
is a Supreme Court decision, Maryland v. Pringle, that approves the police 
arresting every passenger in a car where drugs are found.

The case stems from a 1999 traffic stop in Maryland, during which police 
found a roll of money in the glove box and some cocaine in the armrest in 
the back seat. Neither the driver nor the two passengers admitted to owning 
the drugs, so the police simply arrested all three of them.

On Monday, the Supreme Court said that was fine.

The ruling puts people on notice that they had better be careful whom they 
ride with. In normal circumstances it would be considered somewhat rude to 
ask to search through the glove box when somebody offers you a ride, but 
that might not be a bad idea in the wake of this decision. The court's 
rationale also could apply to searches of homes and to contraband other 
than drugs.

As Tim Lynch, director of criminal justice studies at the Cato Institute, 
said, it is not so much that the decision to arrest in this particular case 
was completely out of line. It's that the drug war causes the police and 
the courts to keep pushing at personal privacy. A few weeks ago, the high 
court ruled that if somebody didn't answer a knock on the door in 10 or 15 
seconds it was perfectly reasonably to batter down the door.

The fundamental problem is that when a victimless crime is created - in the 
narrow legal sense that neither party in a drug transaction is likely to 
become a complaining victim and demand that the police get the perpetrator, 
as would be the case in, say, a burglary - a problem is created for the police.

The only way to try to enforce such a law is to invade people's private 
spaces - and invade them as quickly, efficiently and sometimes brutally as 
possible.

When the courts look at the situation from the perspective of the drug 
warriors rather than from the perspective of a citizen in a free society 
who has a reasonable expectation of privacy, they keep authorizing ever 
more intrusive methods. It doesn't stop the drug trade, of course, but the 
process gradually erodes the expectation of privacy that ordinary citizens 
should have.

Should passengers in a car be arrested if one of the other people in the 
car is possessing drugs?

Yes, species can cross political borders

What's the difference between a ferruginous pygmy owl living in Arizona and 
a ferruginous pygmy owl living just across the border in Sonora, Mexico? 
And no, south-of-the-border birds do not wear tiny sombreros.

If you answered, "nothing," you've just shown more common sense than the 
geniuses in Washington who wrote and passed the Endangered Species Act 30 
years ago this month, or their successors who enforce the law today.

In fact, there is no biological difference between the two birds, except in 
the eyes of the ESA. It insists that the relatively few owls found in 
Arizona be counted as endangered, granting them special protections that 
have had considerable negative economic impacts on areas where they are 
found, in spite of the fact that the birds are plentiful just south of the 
border. (They also are found in the Rio Grande Valley.)

In practice, the law Balkanizes animal species according to nation-state 
boundaries, meaning that an American population of animals is counted as a 
separate, self-contained group, even though an abundance of identical 
critters can be found living elsewhere. Animals, of course, don't respect 
such borders; Canada geese, for instance, don't confine their activities to 
Canada.

But the law doesn't recognize that simple fact, in one of many absurdities 
that demands a correction.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service this week asked a federal judge to 
remove the bird from the endangered list, given that pygmy owls are in no 
real danger of extinction and because of the dramatic impact the listing 
has had in Arizona, where 1.2 million acres were set aside as critical 
habitat. A panel of federal judges already ruled once that the bird's 1997 
listing was "arbitrary and capricious." But radical environmental groups 
are predictably pledging to fight the de-listing, lest they lose a powerful 
tool for halting development in the Tucson area.

We offer this story as just one more reminder of why the ESA, which this 
month "celebrates" its 30-year anniversary, is an out-of-control, 
counter-to-common-sense law badly in need of an overhaul or outright repeal.
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart