The manufacturer of these devices, American Science & Engineering, says that it's best customer is the US Department of Defense. They use these trucks in Afghanistan and Iraq to detect bombs in vehicles. However, they also admit that they sell their mobile scanning trucks to law enforcement departments across the United States. Can anyone say "warrantless search?"
http://tinyurl.com/2eyrc9c
It sounds like something straight out of George Orwell’s 1984: Government vans, equipped with full-body X-ray scanning machines, have been deployed on the streets of our cities, monitoring an unwitting populace for signs of illegal activity.
You could simply be going about your daily activities, not even doing something that should invite the suspicions of the authorities, but it doesn’t matter. The police can still scan you and the contents of your vehicle, and if they see something that arouses their suspicions, stop you immediately and search you, your vehicle, and its contents.
When I got to this point in the article, I had one thought in my head. This activity constitutes an unconstitutional search. According to legal scholars, my first instinct is likely correct.
“First, it’s not clear that it is legal,” says Dr. Daniel Steinbock, professor of law and interim dean at the University of Toledo College of Law. “In fact, the Supreme Court has already ruled in Kyllo v. United States, that the use of similar technology, in this case, thermal imaging, is illegal under the Fourth Amendment’s restraint on the government performing searches without probable cause.”
Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), agrees; in fact, EPIC is currently suing the Department of Homeland Security to stop the usage of full-body-scan technology in airports. “It’s no surprise that governments and vendors are very enthusiastic about the vans,” he said in a recent interview with Forbes. “But from a privacy perspective, it’s one of the most intrusive technologies conceivable.”
I don't know if there are health concerns with this technology, but that isn't the most important aspect of this to me. The US Supreme Court has ruled more than once that law enforcement cannot simply decide to search every car driving down a highway in a fishing expedition, and that's precisely what these mobile devices allow them to do.
And this perfectly illustrates the constant struggle between freedom and government. Law enforcement officers are USING this technology today, even though doing so is likely an illegal act. Why? Because the ability to freely search every car makes their job easier, so they like it. The fact that such searches go a long way to destroying the freedom and liberty that this country is supposed to be about doesn't seem to bother them.
We have rules that government MUST follow, and in this case they are not doing so.
So, what do YOU think? Are vans such as these a legitimate law enforcement tool, or do they violate our rights against unreasonable searches and seizures?
I know what I think, but what do YOU think?
Technology progresses. Within five years....cities like Memphis, New Orleans and Dallas will have a pick-up scanner system to roam the city and pick up on cars with rifles or pistols in them. Sensors will be on streetlights in these towns to detect gunfire and mini-cams will capture the car involved in the shooting. We will agree that it makes society safer and go along with this.
ReplyDeleteI admit, this is making us into a protective society which we hate...but life hasn't stopped in 1965, and we are threatened more today than we were in 1965.