It's almost always a bad idea to buy fire insurance right
after a fire. At that point you're still dazed and in shock. Your lungs are
still clearing themselves of smoke; your head is buzzing; you're frazzled and
emotional, and your judgment is profoundly impaired. This is no time to be
making long-lasting, weighty decisions with a high price tag attached to them
just because you're scared. Unless there is another fire in plain view bearing
down on you, it is always advisable to step back, take a deep breath and think
carefully about your next move.
Sadly, in the days immediately following 9/11, our fear
got the better of us as a nation and we did just the opposite. When our
government--the same government by the way that failed to protect us from the 9/11
attacks--asked us to sign on the dotted line of the insurance policy they had
drafted up, we acquiesced, still transfixed through stunned, bleary eyes by the
shocking images on our televisions. Civil libertarians warned us that we were
signing away our rights, but in those panicky times they were heeded about as
much as Cassandra was by her Trojan countrymen. As a result, we bought and paid
for a duplicitous little document called the Patriot Act.
Amongst the new powers granted U.S. law enforcement under
this Patriot Act was a tool that came to be known as "sneak and
peak". This whimsically titled tactic is essentially a request submitted
to a judge for the purpose of conducting searches without notifying the suspect
who is to be surveilled. It is also a violation of the Fourth Amendment, but
again, the whole country was so petrified that another terrorist attack was
imminent that privacy didn't seem important by comparison. "Sneak and
peak" was perceived as a temporary and necessary measure during a time of
great crisis; and it was only supposed to be used against suspected terrorists.
Unfortunately, law enforcement didn't see it that way,
and it wasn't long before the "sneak and peak" provision was being
used to investigate crimes not related to terrorism. An institution who
collectively, regularly views the Bill of Rights as an obstacle to their
ability to do their jobs will always seize upon and exploit any easing of
restraint provided for in those ten amendments that the American public allows.
The Bill of Rights wasn't put into place to protect citizens from each other; it
was created to protect them from the abuses of government.
Prior to the American War for Independence, the British
government's method of compliance with regards to search and seizure was the
issuance of general warrants known as writs of assistance. These warrants allowed
British agents to forcefully enter virtually any home at any time and to seize
just about any property they saw fit to confiscate in the King's name. The
ostensible motivation for the Crown at this time for these invasions of privacy
was that the colonists were smuggling and evading taxes. As one might imagine,
abuses of this power were commonplace. The drafters of the Constitution who saw
fit to include the Fourth Amendment did so to prevent such abuses in the
future. They might not understand all the complexities of electronic
surveillance in the modern world, but even they would grasp the concept that
the War on Drugs should not be waged with a document designed to fight the War
on Terror.
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