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The "100 mile from the border Constitution-free zone" (actually 150 miles I believe) has more of a basis in reality than you acknowledge.

The Border Patrol is able to operate in that zone, and they operate under somewhat different rules than other forms of law enforcement. Furthermore they sometimes interpret their ability to operate somewhat more generously than a court would agree to. So while in theory they can't do what they sometimes do, in practice they are the ones there with guns and they do it anyways.

(In particular the court has ruled that they can stop and question everyone on a public thoroughfare because the intrusion is short in duration. I've seen documented cases where agents in the field clearly believed that they could question for as long as they wanted to question. The reasoning of the court would not support that conclusion...)

So, very much not really a constitution-free zone. But certainly the border patrol walks closer to the edge of constitutional protections that we take for granted.

The problem with the Internet meme is that to be valid, as I understand it based on my reading, the search has to be incident to an actual recent border crossing. Merely living in NYC does not subject you to routine searches under the border search exemption. But that's what the meme says!

Its even worse! They call it a "Constitution-free" zone as if it has any connection with other rights.

Living in NYC might not subject you to routine searches, but that seems to be more of an issue of practicality than legality. Living in southern Arizona does in fact subject you to routine searches.

I have been personally stopped near the AZ/Mexico border (maybe 15 miles away), questioned before being allowed to drive away, and I have never actually crossed that particular border.

This is true. My father and brother were recently stopped near Bisbee. I guess my brother has been stopped in New Mexico 3 times.

Have you ever watched any of the videos of the guys refusing to answer even the simplest questions at those checkpoints?

No, I haven't. What happens?

Nothing. CBP asks questions. The drivers refuse to answer. CBP gets their supervisor. One guy asks the supervisor for proof of his citizenship. All the drivers get waved through within a couple minutes.

They key appears to be not to pull to the side of the road for extended questioning, because as long as you're in the main lane, you're holding up traffic.

Perhaps you should experience it for yourself as I and others have, and see whether it remains just an internet meme.

I believe that your reading is incorrect.

The border patrol can and does regularly put up blockades on major thoroughfares, stops everyone, and potentially could choose to search anyone that they reasonably suspect was recently out of the country or is illegal.

This is not hypothetical. I personally have encountered this when I was stopped and questioned both on the I-5 just north of San Diego, and on secondary streets in Los Angeles. Neither time did they choose to search me, but I saw others that I believe were searched.

I believe you can refuse to comply with those checkpoints.

As an aside, the ACLU's "Constitution free zone" campaign isn't referring to citizenship checks†; it's referring to a DHS employee's insistence that being within N miles of anything that could be considered a border subjects you to warrantless border searches. Which, again, is something you can find a SCOTUS case refuting.

† Unfortunately, it's now apparently the law of the land that the police can demand identification from citizens, which is one of the great BS decisions of the last 20 years.

What's the case?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiibel_v._Sixth_Judicial_Distri...

That's the ID case, btw, not the border search case. I'll try to track that down today.

Oh, I thought that's what the replier was asking about. The border stuff, I think you're right that 'constitution-free zone' thing is rather hyperventilaty.

On the other hand, the notion that a bunch of uniformed, armed dudes pulling you off the I5 well north of San Diego for no apparent reason and asking things is 'a search you can refuse' is a little glib. When it happens, 'but wait there is case law' or 'I saw this on youtube' is not the first thing that comes to mind.

It was a glib answer. It's not wrong, though. Read Almeida-Sanchez v. US.

Reminder, though: we're talking about two different things: warrantless searches and documentation checks. It is, unfortunately, lawful for the police to demand your identification in a wide variety of circumstances, post Hiibel. (You still have the right to remain silent at those checkpoints, which is what the Youtube videos demonstrate).

Agreed on the 'search vs id check' distinction. The case law you mention involved someone taking it up all the way to the Supreme Court, a luxury not many have.

The reality is that these border patrol checks do happen, often well outside any reasonable range of an actual border and that they tend to be aggressive and searchy and done by people and to people who most likely did not take a close reading of Almeida-Sanchez v. US.

I believe you can refuse to comply with those checkpoints.

I know that people have done so, and the result has been somewhat interesting. Based on what I've read, I suspect that the actual protection from the 5th amendment is currently being interpreted much more narrowly than they were historically, and if the agents pushed it you have a lot less immunity from having to answer their questions than you would like.

Please note that I said, "I suspect". I have read conflicting opinions on this in the past, have no idea which is right, and so it is necessary to put significant disclaimers next to anything that I say on the topic.

This is a more serious problem than you think. If someone in any position of power thinks that there are no limits, not even the constitution, on their power then that is very bad. It's even worse if they say it publicly and are not immediately out on their ass and publicly humiliated and shunned.

The fact is that there are individuals abusing their power and often times they are getting away with it, even when it becomes widely known.

P.S. To add to this, it's important to understand the relation of law to society. There is nothing inherently special about law other than that people generally follow it. The more that people, especially people given power through positions in government, start ignoring or misinterpreting the law the less the law actually matters. What is the truth of legality is irrelevant to the facts on the ground. Murder may be illegal but that won't stop you from being murdered. Similarly, "constitution free zones" may not be legal but that doesn't help you if the police think otherwise. For that particular point, for example, consider the many immigration stops the police make in states near the mexican border. Legally they can't force you to stop and submit to a document check but that doesn't stop them from doing so anyway, and from most people complying to a simple request from a police officer.

The less oversight there is, the less punishment there is, the more likely it is that abuses of power will become more common.

>* if the USG employed 1/4th the number of people it does now, that'd still be over a million people, and no group of one million people can possibly avoid a couple crazy people.*

Also known as "the lone wolf" - "bad apple" explanation / defence.

It's not about what he said (which sounds like a BS excuse in the first place) -- or even if he "had no limits" or not. Of course he had limits. He couldn't open fire in 5th Avenue and expect it to be OK.

The issue is what he was doing there and in what authority. Also, does anybody really believes they respect the limitation of operations inside US, because "it's the law"?

The unrelated case of the "100 mile from the border Constitution-free zone" is also not about the legal basis. Dismissing the legend part of it doesn't change the reality of border patrol more often than not taking the law into their hands and doing whatever the fuck they like with little repercussions.

I've always been baffled by the use of "Oh, it's just a few bad apples" as if that excuses things, when the original idiom is "a few bad apples spoil the barrel" - meaning that if you leave rotten apples with other apples, the other apples will rot, so you need to keep on top of the situation and get rid of the bad apples ASAP. But they use it like it was "a few bad apples aren't a big deal, get rid of them whenever someone leaks it".

Why are CIA agents being embedded with NYPD?

That's the main question. If they had limits or not is secondary.

After 9/11, the CIA were tapped to help the NYPD set up an anti-terrorism intelligence wing. This is a pretty good book about it:

http://www.amazon.com/Securing-City-Americas-Counterterror-F...

We should call / email the CIA and see if they can loan us some agents to help establish a "Hacker News Anti-Surveillance Wing".

If HN was subject to a credible terrorism threat, they would be happy to. The CIA, DHS, and many other state and federal agencies work with the NFL and MLB to help protect the Superbowl and World Series. The NSA sends its people to help secure Google against Chinese hackers.

If they didn't, we would complain they weren't doing their jobs.

The best example of this I can think of is

.. something other than the topic at hand, where only the gullibe just take "retarded statements" on faith, even if only as much to further discuss them, while the super heroes of intellectual honesty dismiss them on the same basis and blame bad apples.

"Nothing to see here", in however many words it is said, is really just a meme as well.

I disagree and don't bother downvoting, someone else downvotes me for that and doesn't even attempt to argue? To each their own...

Would it make sense for courts to sign off on regulations before they're enacted? This is like an engineer throwing code into production only to test it after enough customers complain.

Yes it would. This was mentioned earlier on the site on a similar thread.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_court

Every time you see a proposal that suggests increasing the power of the courts, remember that federal judges aren't elected, and we're not a nation governed by a panel of philosopher-kings. The courts are already very powerful.

Tuesday's Shelby County v. Holder decision, which struck down part of the Voting Rights Act, was a power grab by the court majority that strayed wildly from precedent. From SCOTUS blog:

"Regarding deference, not that long ago, the Justices believed Congress held something close to plenary power when it crafted remedies addressing racial discrimination in voting. In case after case, the Justices made clear that they would not second-guess congressional judgments on the subject. Even as the Justices began looking more rigorously at particular types of congressional remedial action elsewhere, they repeatedly distinguished the invalidated laws from the VRA and celebrated provisions like preclearance as paradigmatic examples of permissible congressional action...

"The decision significantly diminishes Congress’s ability to craft future remedies for racial discrimination in voting and beyond. Indeed, after today, an administrative agency acting within the sphere of its expertise enjoys more discretion than does Congress when acting in the realm in which its power was once viewed to be at its apogee.

"At oral argument last winter, Justice Kagan bristled at the notion that the Court, rather than Congress, was the proper institution to decide when remedial action in this realm was needed. Justice Scalia was nevertheless convinced that “[t]his is not the kind of question you can leave to Congress.” Today’s decision makes clear that a majority of the Court shares this view. Earl Warren would have been astounded. William Rehnquist, too."

http://www.scotusblog.com/2013/06/how-big-is-shelby-county/#...

"The formula that was struck down identified jurisdictions subject to preclearance as those with a history of a voting test or device and less than 50 percent voter registration or turnout as of 1964, 1968 or 1972."

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/up-front/posts/2013/06/25-sup...

The decision hinged upon this very narrow point. Congress' decision to require preclearance was not declared unconstitutional on its own. The problem was that the formula for deciding who required preclearance is a static rule that does not allow for the evaluation of any events after 1972. Therefore, regardless of how much a state or other jurisdiction changes, they could not change their status under this law. If they were originally on the preclearance list, never had another voting anomaly, elected minorities to every position in the state, and had 100% minority turnout, for decades on end, they would remain on the preclearance list, because of what happened 40 years ago.

Chief Justice John Roberts even wrote in his opinion that congress is free to make new legislation that has the same consequences. But it must rely on current data to evaluate jurisdictions.

> The problem was that the formula for deciding who required preclearance is a static rule that does not allow for the evaluation of any events after 1972. Therefore, regardless of how much a state or other jurisdiction changes, they could not change their status under this law. If they were originally on the preclearance list, never had another voting anomaly, elected minorities to every position in the state, and had 100% minority turnout, for decades on end, they would remain on the preclearance list, because of what happened 40 years ago.

That's simply not true. You can seek exemption from section 5. It's called "bailing out". A county or state on the preclearance list that has not been discriminatory for 10 years (see [1] for criteria) may sue to be exempt from Section 5. Many counties have done this successfully; the state of New Hampshire successfully bailed out as recently as this March.

States or counties that were found to be discriminatory could also be "bailed in." Arkansas and New Mexico, LA County in California, as well as several other counties were bailed in.

In other words, the Voting Rights Act was built with a mechanism to self-destruct when it was no longer necessary. Congress overwhelmingly approved an extension of the VRA in 2006 after extensive research and testimony. If a state or county was still covered in 2013, then it had a problem with discrimination within the past ten years, which is the minority thought the opinion that "things have changed" was foolish.

http://www.justice.gov/crt/about/vot/misc/sec_4.php

The problem for me with this is that SCOTUS is defining "current," and additionally defining it in a nebulous way.

If they were originally on the preclearance list, never had another voting anomaly, elected minorities to every position in the state, and had 100% minority turnout, for decades on end, they could introduce a bill in Congress to end preclearance in their specific case. Of course, the current data from those jurisdictions is probably nearly as dismal as it was in 1972, so this wouldn't happen. Instead, the requirement for preclearance has been removed by dictate, with no evidence that the situation has significantly changed.

Some notion of testing before pushing to production mightn't be a bad idea, though. Or at least make bug reports quicker and less expensive, rolling back easier, &c.

The real check on this sort of stupidity is actual journalist doing actual journalism.

Is there a good cite for the 100-mile border search zone being "found wanting"? A court case or something? I'd like to be able to link that in discussions, if it's true.

It is taken on faith by the media because these statements ARE TRUE until proven otherwise in the courts! You think these sorts of attitudes are confined to management? If the guy on the ground thinks it is true, it is true. And especially as they are guys that are highly unlikely to be investigated and with whom the courts can be extremely lenient.

I fully understand that this is case of little boys playing cops and robbers and making the rules up as they go.. but they are playing with real guns.