Freedom Seduced
Holiday roadblocks.

By Eric Peters, an automotive columnist for the Washington Times
December 21, 2001 8:30 a.m.

f you plan on driving during the holidays, you may have to deal with a sobriety checkpoint or police roadblock of some sort. Even though you probably haven't done anything unlawful, you'll nonetheless be compelled to stop your vehicle and submit to at least an once-over by a policeman looking for evidence of impaired driving or other illegal activities.

These increasingly popular dragnet-style methods have, rather amazingly, been sanctioned by the Supreme Court — even though it's eminently debatable whether the Framers of our Constitution and Bill of Rights would have endorsed what amount to random stop-and-frisks, without anything remotely resembling probable cause. In any other situation, police would need probable cause at minimum — e.g., substantive reason to suspect illegal or criminal activity — before having any right to detain or search you. But that standard evaporates once you get behind the wheel.

Citing "compelling state interest" and "getting drunks off the road" — as the courts and groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving have done — doesn't negate the fact that people, usually perfectly innocent of any crime, are being waylaid by the authorities and subjected to a frightening and intimidating interrogation (lights, sirens; men with badges and guns), without their having done anything at all, other than operate a motor vehicle on public roads.

The courts say that by operating a vehicle on public roads you have given your "implied consent" to sobriety checkpoints and have, therefore, surrendered some of the protections you'd be entitled to in, say, your own home. But the fact remains that police do not (yet) have the right to randomly stop and search pedestrians for signs of illegal activity or intent — whether they are in public or not. Probable cause is still necessary.

That's as it should be — and exactly as the Framers of our government intended. Blanket searches of anyone and everyone, just for the heck of it, are exactly the kinds of things our ancestors fought the British over. That we have come to accept it today is an ominous portent. It suggests a shift in mentality that might, one day in the not-so-distant future, dispose us to passively submit to more heavy-handed tactics. If the danger is not recognized, and if the precedent set by such things as random sobriety checkpoints is not effectively challenged, we are paving the way for a totalitarian.

The whole point of our Constitution and Bill of Rights is to set clearly defined boundaries beyond which the state may not tread — without very good reason, that is, and even then only toward those particular individuals who have given clear evidence of wrongdoing.

"Catching drunks" is no more a justification for random sobriety checkpoints than "catching crooks" is for suspension of habeas corpus protections. The alternative is a devil's bargain — and the price is extremely high.

Public anxiety surrounding the recent terrorist attacks may well tilt the balance. There has been talk of mandatory national ID cards with biometric "tags" such as fingerprints and even retinal scans. And police checkpoints have become more common — all with little protest. The promise of "order" and "security" is viciously seductive. . . and it's easy to understand how people get lured in.

Identifying and catching terrorists, for example, is certainly a laudable goal; so is apprehending people who get behind the wheel when they're pickled. But as worthy as those goals are, they should not require us to surrender the freedoms that make this nation unique in the history of the world.

Any government can be "tough on crime" — all it takes is the ham-fisted application of unlimited force. But only one nation has enshrined the right of the individual to be left alone — at least until he gives clear evidence of having done something that might put others at risk.

That's a legacy worth protecting, or at least it ought to be.