The current GOP-led White House and the current Democrat-led Congress are amending (I use this verb genteelly) the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which has always read:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Follow me below the fold as I argue that when you put recent events regarding searches and seizures together, what you see is the evolving creation of a New United States of America (NUSA), a nation that would have looked quite foreign and unacceptable to our forefathers.
We've seen some of the individual jigsaw puzzle pieces. Perhaps in isolation they might make some sense in post-9/11 America. Perhaps in isolation they don't point to an alarming shift in one of the founding freedoms Americans have expected to enjoy, a freedom the authors of the Constitution had expected to insure future generations of Americans: a right to privacy that is in part maintained by keeping the government from intrusive searches and seizures of persons and their property. Our forefathers knew, having lived under the tyrannical rule of a king and his army, that if a government's ability to search and to seize was not curtailed, then the country would devolve into a police state. The picture that is created when the puzzle pieces are put together shows me we have already gone down an oily down-sloping road, a path that our next president and our next Congress can either continue or a path they can alter or reverse. Here's a few of those puzzle pieces.
Police are using GPS to watch suspected criminals (and who knows who else) "often without a warrant or court order", according to the Washington Post. The recent article by Ben Hubbard reports that law enforcement officials are very reluctant to talk about their use of warrantless GPS monitoring, but instead dismiss it simply as a cheap, effective way to "tail" someone as part of a criminal investigation. A DailyKos diarist was recently detained at the Canadian border, his camera temporarily confiscated and its contents searched, before he was allowed to go to Canada and enjoy his passion of photography. In late July, 2008, police raided the home of a Maryland mayor and in what the mayor described as "sport" killings, officers of the Prince George's County Sheriff's Department shot to death his two beloved four-legged children (the mayor and his wife said their two black labs were like children to them). No doubt frightened at seeing its playmate shot by a group of intruding strangers who broke down the mayor's front door, one of the dogs ran into the dining room and was shot fleeing the police. The Berwyn Heights mayor rightfully noted his position of privilege (being a mayor has its benefits) and asked the public this appropriate question: if this could happen to him and his wife, couldn't it happen to anyone? Rather than issue an immediate, sincere apology, if not for the botched raid, then at least for his officers on his watch killing family pets, the Prince George's County Sheriff was defiant: he has not released the names of the officers who shot the dogs to death, and he only issued a half-hearted apology about the dogs having been slain (and this half-hearted apology came only after much national outcry). Instead, he said the unnamed officers (who can rightfully now be called secret police) felt "threatened" by the dogs (though it's baffling how a dog running away from someone who is armed could ever be perceived as posing a threat to that person).
In May, 2008, in Loxley, Alabama, a migrant worker from Mexico, Victor Marquez, had his life savings confiscated by a law enforcement officer, although Mr. Marquez was not arrested, because he did nothing illegal. Mr. Marquez had saved $20,000 over a period of nine years toiling in America doing work that most Americans wouldn't lower themselves to do. He was on his way to Mexico to purchase a home in his homeland with his life's savings when he was stopped in his vehicle and his money taken. The probable cause? It must be drug money, said the police. Of course, we still don't know why it must be drug money. Let me reiterate: Mr. Marquez was not arrested, because he did nothing illegal. For their part, the Southern Poverty Law Center is trying to have Mr. Marquez's money returned to him. And of course we know all about the search and seizure of laptop computers of travelers entering the country: no need for probable cause according to the ironically named Department of Homeland Security. Let me not forget this jigsaw puzzle piece, FISA, and the rationale used for it. Detain, search, & confiscate is becoming the norm for what I call the New United States of America.
OK, we've heard these stories before, but aside from the ACLU and the SPLC, have enough people noticed that the 4th Amendment line in the sand drawn so deliberately by our forefathers is vanishing?
Back to Berwyn Heights, Maryland, mayor Cheye Calvo (from the Washington Post):
"My government blew through my doors and killed my dogs," Calvo said. "They thought we were drug dealers, and we were treated as such. I don't think they really ever considered that we weren't."
And this:
The investigation that led police to their house in the 8500 block of Edmonston Road began in Arizona, officials said. There, a police dog at a shipping facility identified the package as being filled with marijuana. Prince George's officers posed as deliverymen and brought it to Calvo's home.
The problem is not that Maryland police tried to stop illegal drugs from falling into the hands of a drug dealer. The problems are that the police failed to do the most basic of fact-checking, and having failed that, they did not consider that a no-knock search would be inappropriate. You see, the police--who acted as deliverymen--had the name and address of the person and place where the package of pot was to be delivered to (the mayor's wife, whose identity had been stolen). But, the police obtained a "no-knock search warrant", when they would not have if they had bothered to perform a 60-second internet search of the name and the address on the package of dope. The police would have seen that the package was addressed to a state employee (the mayor's wife) who has no criminal history, and who is married to a man, an elected official, who also has no criminal history. Something other than the box of dope should have started to smell funny at that point in the investigation, but alas, the police didn't go there. Instead, they burst in, guns blazing. What a bigger news story The Prince George's County Drug Bust That Wasn't would have been if Mayor Calvo had been an armed-to-the-teeth citizen hypervigilent about protecting his property and his safety in his own home. It could have been a shoot-out; and, in court, he could have argued that he used lethal force because he felt threatened by armed intruders. For sure, he could have proven that his wife's identity was stolen and that the two of them are not drug dealers.
Back to Victor Marquez: there is nothing in and of itself illegal about carrying a large sum of cash on one's person. Nor could carrying a large sum of cash be remotely construed as being involved in the illicit drug industry. Yet, his money was taken from him.
Back to our fellow DailyKos diarist: carrying a camera is not illegal and there is nothing that could be construed as being suspicious about carrying a camera to a foreign country (we've been doing it for decades). Yet, once he told his story to the American border police, he was suspected of planning on visiting a prostitute.
What's missing from all of these stories is the lack of threat to national security, which is the reason the curtailing of the Fourth Amendment began in the first place. There was not a single mention of a terroristic plot or a terrorist cell in any of these news stories. What is also missing is probable cause. What's obvious when putting these news stories together is that it hasn't taken long for police to begin to act secretly in monitoring the privacy of individuals in the United States, and to seize (and in mayor Calvo's case, kill) property belonging to those in America. In other words, it hasn't taken long for the trickle down effect--from federal government to state and local law enforcement--of making impotent the protections found in the Fourth Amendment.
What's next on our collective descent down the path eroding our protection from unreasonable search and seizure? If carrying large amounts of money is taken to mean that the person must be a drug dealer, why not argue that having huge sums of money in one's bank account mean the same thing? Why not secretly and warrantlessly spy on the bank balances of Americans, and then seize the money from those bank accounts that have large balances?
Let me take it further, why not spy on each other? Or, why not spy on the police and on elected officials? If a police officer without any probable cause can attach a GPS device to my car and see wherever I am going in my vehicle, then clearly I am afforded that same right. If New York City can photograph the license plates of every vehicle that enters its borders and keep a log of those license plates (effectively tracking the occupants en mass), then I am allowed to photograph every license plate that enters any place that I choose to monitor, including buildings that host people whose sociopolitical beliefs I don't like, right? If it's good for the goose, it's good for the gander, as the saying goes.
If all of this monitoring by the government feels eerily familiar, it should. It's what Germany began to do in the mid- to late-1930's. How many Germans then wondered what scary trajectory its government was taking and what scary ride its government was taking its people on? The guarantees of the Fourth Amendment are essentially anti-fascist in nature. Therefore, reducing our Fourth Amendment rights moves us closer to allowing fascist forces to wield their hateful power. History and the puzzle pieces found in America today show us this.