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Comment by higherpurpose | Hacker News Reader

> For instance, the Court helpfully ruled that law enforcement's subjective reasons for pulling over a car don't matter so long as they can articulate some objective basis for the stop, like a traffic violation — even though the traffic violation is only a pretext.

This has to be the Supreme Court's worst ruling in recent times since Citizens United. The cops can stop you based on an "objective" fake reason? What a ridiculous idea. "Oh, I thought your light was broken...well nevermind that, let's search you for drugs now!" In what world is that a "common sense" ruling?

> The agent's declaration also disclosed that the DEA shut down the database in 2013 — after the Reuters story broke, in other words.

They didn't "shut it down". They only "suspended" it in September 2013...and tried to put it back online by the end of the year. I imagine they'll keep trying.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/why-we-sued-dea-mass-s...

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At least in Australia the Supreme Court is willing to uphold a person's right to privacy.

A case[1] in South Australia in February this year went to the Supreme Court (Court of Criminal Appeal) resulting in aquittal.

A similar case (drug trafficking) in the South Australian District Court resulted in a nolle prosequi because the judge ruled the defect inspection of the vehicle illegal and struck the evidence. The ruling on that case hasn't been posted online yet.

The police will, no doubt, continue to perform illegal searches where they believe they can get away with it. But you can win against them in court here in Australia.

1. http://www.courts.sa.gov.au/Judgments/Lists/Judgments/Attach...

Citizens United was a great ruling, despite what you may have heard. People do not lose their rights just because they decide to act together. Remember what citizens united was about, it was about people releasing a film -- that's it; and the government saying that it was not ok to release X days before the election.

"Remember what citizens united was about, it was about people releasing a film -- that's it"

It was about a bit more than the pretext, the Justices' attempts at legal arguments to justify the ruling were absolutely horrifying, and the effects of the ruling have been disastrous given that it's effectively equated money with speech, permitting some citizens be more equal than others.

No, it recognizes that people aren't equal.

  1. Some are taller
  2. Some are journalists
  3. Some have lots of free time
  4. Some are famous
  5. Some own printing presses
  6. Some are politicians
  7. Some are beautiful
  8. Some are rich
  9. Some are retired  
  ...

Pretending that everyones voice is the same by removing money is wrong. It just increases the power of people with other advantages. Campaign finance laws are crazy.

"Pretending that everyones voice is the same by removing money is wrong."

I can't see how that's wrong at all. The wealthiest will always have more influence, but deliberately granting the wealthy more political influence is profoundly contrary to the principles of governance for a democratic society - it's naked plutocracy.

The American way is political equality, regardless of other factors including wealth.

As opposed to the entirety of legal history before 2010, when rich newspaper owners had just as much power to exercise free speech as scruffy-looking homeless people?

If documentation doesn't match behavior, and you're not going to change the behavior, change the documentation.

As opposed to the entirety of legal history before 2010, when rich newspaper owners had just as much power to exercise free speech as scruffy-looking homeless people?

(Shrug) The Internet has fixed that.

"If documentation doesn't match behavior, and you're not going to change the behavior, change the documentation."

I think it'd be better to fix the rules than design them to encourage things detrimental to society. We'd be better off undoing Reagan's damaging removal of the Fairness Doctrine from the FCC (which had helped fix the media issues you noted before it was gutted), than just writing rules to make plutocracy our official policy.

Whether it's detrimental is unclear. Although there are exceptions, of course, it seems fair to say that, as a general rule, people with a lot of money tend to be better educated, more intelligent, and more hardworking than those with no money. Like I said, for them to have more access to speech has been true for the entirety of human history, and it hasn't been that bad.

We don't have security, we have security theater, we don't have democracy, we have democracy theater, we don't have rule of law, we have rule of law theater ...

Is that so because we vote according to who produces best theater?

You've got it backwards. Whren means that what matters is the objective circumstances, not what the officer is thinking. If Whren hadn't taken an illegal turn, the officer couldn't have offered some subjective reason for pulling him over.

That's an explanation of the legal theory, correct?

The other side of the issue is the practical outcome. If typical defendants don't have the resources to examine whether the objective reasons given for stops are legitimate, then the distinction doesn't seem very comforting.

No, that's an explanation of the practical outcome. It's much harder to force the typical defendant to argue about what the officer subjectively believed than to point to the objective facts.

I read higherpurpose's concern as being about the use of secret surveillance information for targeting vehicles for searches. My understanding was that they saw that as, at least, a subversion of the way a just system ought to work.

It looks like higherpurpose is over-reading "pretext" to be a false statement, but I think I agree with the sentiment that I don't really want police focusing their attention based on information that they later obscure (I would not be surprised if there are exceptions to this that I would agree with).

So the question I was formulating was about the incentive this creates for the officers (to pull people of interest over for whatever the hell) and the differing ability of those people to challenge the stop. I guess on further thought that isn't a particularly interesting question (driving is easy enough to nitpick and find a legitimate pretext that will withstand scrutiny).

Anyway, when I said 'legal theory', I meant that you were explaining the particulars of that decision more than you were addressing the concerns about targeting, and when I said 'practical outcome', I was thinking about how it would influence behavior of law enforcement more than how it would play out in court.

The problem here is that the law also applies to the officer's behavior, and intent matters.

The officer requires probable cause for pulling the person over. The illegal turn is not the probable cause that the officer is using. The illegal surveillance is, but the officer is lying about that.

In what world is that a "common sense" ruling?

A world where the John Robertses and Antonin Scalias don't have to worry about it happening to them.

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