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COURT'S DRUG DOG RULING TAKES A BITE OUT OF FREEDOM

Perhaps it's not the stuff of massive outrage.  But a U.S.  Supreme Court decision issued Monday - which allows drug-sniffing dogs to sniff a car during a routine traffic stop - represents another small erosion of privacy and personal freedom.  Freedoms are generally lost little by little, often by giving authorities just a little more latitude in difficult or ambivalent circumstances.  We fear Illinois v.  Caballes, which reversed the Illinois Supreme Court, will come to be seen as another small step in the slow but steady erosion of privacy. 

Caballes was stopped in Illinois for going 6 mph over the speed limit.  While the officer was writing a warning, a second officer with a drug-sniffing dog came to the scene and had the dog walk around the car.  When the dog alerted on the trunk, the officers opened it, found marijuana and arrested Caballes. 

The trial court refused to suppress the marijuana evidence.  But the Illinois Supreme Court held that it should have been suppressed, finding that there were no specific and articulable facts discovered during the traffic stop to suggest drug activity, and that use of the dog had unjustifiably enlarged a routine traffic stop. 

We think the Illinois court had it right.  Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in dissent, argued that the decision "clears the way for suspicionless, dog-accompanied drug sweeps of parked cars along sidewalks and in parking lots ...  Nor would motorists have constitutional grounds for complaint should police with dogs, stationed at long traffic lights, circle cars waiting for the red signal to turn green."

It's worth noting that this decision applies only to drug cases, not to dog-sniffing searches for explosives, which might arguably be more justified in this era of uncertainty and potential terrorism.  It simply carves out a little larger space in what might be called the drug-war exception to the Fourth Amendment, which requires that searches be based on probable cause and require a warrant from a judge before they are conducted. 

Thus the fundamental assumption behind a free society - that except in extraordinary circumstances people should be free of official surveillance and invasion of their persons and properties - is eroded just a bit more.