The Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution http://www.billofrights.com

The debate over the need for randomly searching the public mistakenly presents the issue as being a reasonable tradeoff between security and safety. Missing from the debate is any sense of why the US Constitution gave Americans a right to be free from unjustified searches in the first place.

If all the police would be looking for is bombs, few would find the searches objectionable, but is that all the police will be looking for? A key source of information sought by police investigating terrorism or other crimes is computer files in the form of disks and hard drives. Another source is cellphones, which automatically list all received and placed calls. Address books, personal calendars and diaries or personal journals are also exactly the kind of sources authorities will want to examine. Do you have a video camera? The police will want to see whatever you’ve been videotaping.

Where will the new rules on searches draw a line? Can the police search everyone’s mail, tap everyone’s phone and intercept all of our email communications? If they can search our bags without any reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing why can’t they similarly search our homes and cars? Can the police search a business for all sales transactions, for their corporate plans and for blueprints of new products that theoretically might be of use to terrorists?

It’s easy to say, “I’m not a terrorist so there’s nothing for me to hide,” but is there nothing in your life you’d prefer to keep private? Would the knowledge that the police or other government officials could watch your every move on closed circuit television, listen in on every conversation, read every note you write and search your person and possessions anytime or anyplace cause you to change your behavior?

Might it also change your sense of self?

I’ve long suspected that the phenomena of reality TV was not just a form of popular entertainment but was intended to condition the public in preparation for a total surrender of privacy and the imposition of a police state. That reality is now upon us.

Can abandoning our civil freedoms make us safer?

Iraq is occupied by more than 150,000 heavily armed US troops with the right to search anyone at any time. It also has from five to twenty horrific terrorist attacks a day. Israeli security forces are on a much higher level of alert than anything here in the US and Israel has routine terrorist attacks. Russia has the KGB and China has the world’s largest police and security services, yet both remain subject to terrorist attacks. Within the US more than one million incarcerated Americans are strip searched, monitored by closed circuit TV and otherwise watched 24 hours a day, yet most manage to have routine access to knives, illegal drugs and other contraband. Could even the extreme scenario of turning the entire US into a prison stop terrorists?

NYC police officials are quick to admit that no amount of surveillance or searching could guarantee them preventing a terrorist attack and it seems obvious from a statistical viewpoint that randomly searching every fifth subway rider with a bag is highly unlikely to prevent suicide bombers from getting on the subway. Aren’t these searches cosmetically aimed at making people feel safer rather than making them actually be safer?

In that case, what exactly is the real purpose of these searches? Might justifying the complete abandonment of our rights be the real agenda of these apparent terrorist attacks? If so, who is really orchestrating them? Dare we ask, how would manipulating Western countries into giving up their civil rights help al Queda, Muslim fundamentalism or any Muslim nation?

It’s notable that at the exact same time the government wants the public to completely surrender its right to privacy, government officials are making access to information on themselves, their decisions and their policies less and less available to the public. Is this a coincidental development or part of one consistent agenda?

When the Bill of Rights was written its entire purpose was to protect the individual from government. Benjamin Franklin said it best....

“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

President Bush keeps saying they hate us for our freedom. So far, he’s done more to eliminate our freedom than any President in US history. In four years he’s also managed to transform the US from the world’s most admired into the world’s most despised nation.

We should heed Franklin’s words. Once lost, our freedoms will surely never be given back to us. They are what America is all about.