[extropy-chat] John Perry Barlow vs The Man

[Amara Graps]

Patrick.Wilken at Nat.Uni-Magdeburg.DE Fri Dec 17  2004 :
>But won't this will be appealed to a higher court? You wouldn't expect 
>the lowest level court to be particularly interested in making a bold 
>statement on the 4th amendment.

Barlow wrote on 21 December a long blog about his trial and what was
accomplished and not accomplished. I suggest to go there for all
of the details.


"The Windmill Takes the First One"
http://barlow.typepad.com/barlowfriendz/2004/12/the_windmill_ta.html#
more

Here is beginning of his blog:

-------------------- beginning quote
When one is jousting windmills, the possibility of getting
whacked by a windmill blade goes with the enterprise. While I'm a
veteran of many Quixotic campaigns, I've never become fully
immune to the sting of defeat, and I'm still absorbing last
Wednesday's drubbing in the North San Mateo County Courthouse.
(If you don't know what I'm talking about, please see my previous
post, A Taste of the System.)

To put it bluntly, we lost the first round in our effort to limit
the scope of administrative searches of checked airline luggage
to something vaguely compatible with the 4th Amendment which
states:

"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."

Actually, however, this loss was neither unanticipated, nor even
unwelcome. We're aiming to set a precedent here, and in order to
do that, we have to get to at least the state appellate level.
This means that I have to lose twice (at the first hearing to
suppress and then at the county appellate level) before I can win
in a way that might begin to alter federal behavior.

We may already be affecting federal behavior to some extent. I
noticed that one of the links to A Taste of the System was from
the TSA workers' website, so at least a few of those who toil in
the bowels of baggage inspection are meditating on the hassles
they might bring on themselves by reporting non-explosive
contraband. The possibility that the bag in question might belong
to some prickly fellow like me could make them think twice before
calling the cops. (Or maybe not. I've learned from a TSA worker's
account in the Miami New Times that some TSA workers are being
offered cash rewards of up to $1000 for reporting drugs.)

Moreover, we seem to have hit a public nerve that may encourage a
more general prickliness about this stuff. I'm beginning to think
that, whatever the judicial result, I've done some social good
merely by standing up and saying, as many silently believe, that
these searches suck.

We got, and are getting, a fair amount of press. NPR ran a
segment on All Things Considered Thursday. CNN is planning on
covering the story, along with a broader look at TSA screening
procedures, tonight. The Washington Post ran a story about it
yesterday. There was also local coverage, including the San Jose
Mercury News and San Francisco's KGO Television. And the
Blogosphere lit up. For awhile on Thursday, according to Web
tracker Bloogz, A Taste of the System was being linked more
frequently than any other web page in English, save Google.

I've received several hundred e-mails about this matter and the
blog entry relating to it already has almost two hundred comments
dangling from it. These seem to come in only two varieties:
"Attaboy!" and "You're such an idiot for carrying drugs on a
plane that you deserve whatever torments you've gotten or will
get." (I hadn't realized that idiots might be exempted from
constitutional protection - indeed, you'd think we need it worse
- but about 20% of my correspondents seem to think otherwise.)

All this fuss has been positive, I believe. (Though if there were
any nasty federal lists I had made before, I've probably fixed
that now...) Our rights have been slipping quietly away, one
secret emergency regulation at a time. We need to either hop out
of pot or wait meekly to be boiled in it. If my travails have
inspired more discourse on the subject, then it's worth the
additional risk.

Still, I want to win this case in a way that will legally confine
checked baggage searches to such targets as might actually
endanger the aircraft. Achieving that objective will require a
long row against a stiff current if my experience on Wednesday is
any indication.
-------------------- end quote

-- 

Amara Graps, PhD  www.amara.com
Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario (IFSI)
Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF),
Adjunct Assistant Professor Astronomy, AUR,
Roma, ITALIA     Amara.Graps at ifsi.rm.cnr.it