Maybe I'm over-reacting a bit, but I doubt it. The Detroit Free Press is reporting about a little known Federal law that allows police to stop you and demand proof of citizenship at any spot within 100 air miles of the border. It also allows them to search your vehicle. The law says that they can perform the search without probable cause.
My question is this: although non-citizens must carry identification at all times, no law requires citizens to carry ID unless they happen to be operating a motor vehicle. What happens to non-white citizens who have a foreign accent and don't happen to have proof of citizensip on them? Do they get scooped up in a dragnet and sent off to jail?
What about the Fourth Amendment? It doesn't apply only to citizens, it applies to everyone within the borders of the United States and its territories. That means to be stopped and searched, there has to be probable cause, or a reason for the officer to believe that you have committed a crime. Since when is being within 100 miles of the border a crime?
This law has evidently been used for several years in the American Southwest as a tool to apprehend illegal aliens and drug smugglers, and people there have just "gotten used to it". That's right Americans are now getting used to having their rights infringed upon without complaint, just like those who lived in the old Soviet Bloc.
We can combine the checkpoints with passage of the Homeland Security Act, which, among other things, creates a cabinet level Department of Homeland Security. This new department is subject to almost no oversight, doesn not have to abide by the Freedom of Information Act, and its federal employees are not covered by whistle blower laws and are not granted normal civil service protections. They serve, like political appointees, at the pleasure of the President.
The little known Cyber Security Enhancement Act was also embedded into the new law. This lovely piece of work would "allow Net surveillance to gather telephone numbers, IP addresses, and URLs or e-mail information without recourse to a court, where an "immediate threat to a national security interest" is suspected. ISPs will also be permitted to hand users' records over to law enforcement authorities, overturning current legislation that outlaws such behaviour." It also creates a new punishment for Hackers: life in prison. That's right, if the federales decide that a guy vandalizing a web site is threat to others, he could rot at Fort Leavenworth for the rest of his days.
Further ammunition for the conspiracy theorists among us is provided by the Office of Information Awareness, headed by Iran-Contra felon Admiral John Poindexter (USN, retired), with its eye-pyramid, Illuminati themed logo. I'm not sure what this group is really for, but their website claims that they will be researching inromation technology to find means to ferret out terrorists. Given Admiral Poindexter's past, the results are not likely to be anything good for personal privacy. I notice that they seem to think they should have the right to monitor credit card purchases, among other things.
Finally, the FBI's terror watch list has spiralled out of control and is being distributed to local law enforcement and private enterprise. No one can quite tell how people are added to the list, or if there is a procedure to take them off. I'm left wondering if this list is the same one that is being used to keep peace activists off airplanes, and what the definition of "terrorist" is these days.
It's nice to know that we live in a place where our government cares enough to want to know everything about us that there is to know.