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"if Caballes hadn't posessed any marijuana the cops would not have invaded his privacy."

Which translates to: People who do bad things don't deserve and do not have rights.

Unfortunately for the SCOTUS - the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and their own precedent (Miranda v Arizona), all say exactly the opposite.

"If Caballes had been forced to wait while a dog was brought in he would have been detained illegally."

Which basically goes to say that if you're detained for any lawful reason, the police have a right to run a train on you to dig up any possible reason they can to arrest or detain you further. Considering the ridiculously low standards for stopping people and detaining them (Terry stops come to mind), this is essentially an open door to police having every right to stop anyone they please on the street to interrogate, probe, scan, sniff, and/or use other criminal activity detection techniques in an effort to jail the citizen. Now I understand that the vast majority of police officers have no intention or reason to use any of that power, but power does indeed corrupt. I'm sure every cop who's spent more than a month on the force has run into a person they could just swear is up to no good, but who's untouchable because there's no obvious sign of wrongdoing. Rulings like this give the police the opportunity to put someone through Hell on a hunch. Though their intentions may be as pure as snow, the result is the same.

""The legitimate expectation that information about perfectly lawful activity will remain private is categorically distinguishable from respondant's hopes or expectations concerning the nondetection of contraband in the trunk of his car. A dog sniff conducted during a concededly lawful traffic stop that reveals no information other than the location of a substance that no individual has any right to posess does not violate the Fourth Amendment.""

Which can be used as an argument against the 5th Amendment as well. So long as your confession is the only thing beaten out of you, as opposed to your grocery list, any interrogation is a-ok. The criminal does have the right to privacy, even when that privacy may end up concealing his criminal activities. That's not a popular position to take with the law enforcement folks because it makes their job harder. Oh well - want an easier job? Apply for work in China or North Korea where citizens' rights are a locker room joke.

"When transporting massive quantities of an illegal substance, obey the traffic laws."

Always amusing to watch Cops and see these idiots roll through a stop sign while carrying a gram of meth and a couple illegal weapons.

Which translates to: People who do bad things don't deserve and do not have rights.

Not at all. It translates to: any person, guilty or innocent, does not have a right to privacy if the state has probable cause to believe that he has done something illegal. My point was that the dog sniff itself was not an invasion of privacy. The search of the trunk was an invasion of privacy, but the cops were justified because the dog alerted the cops to the marijuana... and the dog only alerted the cops because the marijuana was actually present.

Now... if the cops had pulled over the guy for a traffic violation and searched his trunk without the dog sniff, Caballes' rights would have been violated... because even people who do bad things have rights. But the cops had probable cause.... the dog barked.

Rulings like this give the police the opportunity to put someone through Hell on a hunch.

No. Not at all. The opinion specifically noted that the sniff itself didn't inconvenience Caballes in any way... and that if it had put him through any type of hell (even just the inconvenience of waiting an extra few minutes while the drug dog arrived) then the sniff would have been unconstitutional.

So long as your confession is the only thing beaten out of you, as opposed to your grocery list, any interrogation is a-ok. The criminal does have the right to privacy, even when that privacy may end up concealing his criminal activities.

Again, no. The fourth amendment protects a person's effects except when the state has probable cause to search or seize them. The fifth amendment protects a person from being compelled to incriminate himself without qualification... That is to say, there is sometimes justification for invading privacy but there is never justification for compelling self-incrimination.