Posted on 12/05/2005 12:57:58 PM PST by JOAT
DENVER -- Deborah Davis' refusal to show her identification to federal police at a bus stop has turned her into a cause celebre among privacy-rights advocates.
Mrs. Davis, a 50-year-old Arvada, Colo., grandmother of five, was handcuffed, placed in a police car and ticketed for two petty offenses by Federal Protective Services officers who were checking passengers' identification Sept. 26 aboard a Regional Transportation District (RTD) bus at the Federal Center stop.
..< SNIP >..Several things bothered her about the ID checks. She wasn't entering a federal building or even leaving the bus. The officers barely glanced at the passengers' ID cards and didn't check them against a master list. The whole exercise struck her as "just Big Brother watching you," she said.
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
Does make the point clearer?
Some of you guys really crack me up. You demand a wall around the USA so Jose Illegal can't get a job cleaning toilets...but free and unfettered access to federal properties.
So your solution is to do nothing, because everything can't be done? Sounds like the anti-war left complaining that all the money being spent in Iraq should be spent here instead. Well, was it spent here before the war, and if so what good has it done? Doesn't work that way.
We try to deter granny with every means possible whether a rental truck or a bus. Doesn't mean it's 100%. Doesn't have to be 100%.
No
Overreact much? You're pretty emotional about this. Folks over at DU get you all stirred up?
>>Did she get off the bus?
It does not matter. They own the land. They set up a perimiter and check everyone entering the land. Imagine a military base with several buildings, with a checkpoint at the entrance. Once she is in they would not know if she got off the bus or not. It makes more sense to have a perimiter. Checking ID for half the bus, then trying to run after the bus and watch who gets off, and try to remeber if they were the ones who showed ID or not, would be silly.
By the way, according to another tread, she purposefully took this bus knowing the situation when she could have taken other busses to her destination that did not enter the Federal facility area.
The right to travel is a long-established and inalienable right, and rightly so since without it we have no liberty, we are simply prisoners. By establishing public transportation services, the right to travel on them is not excluded.
The Fourth Amendment says that the people should be secure in their persons, houses, etc. from unreasonable search and seizure - that is, searches without probable cause.
So therefore it follows that a person traveling on public transport retains his/her Fourth Amendment rights; and therefore without probable cause no person can be legally searched while getting on a subway or traveling by bus.
If the means of transportation were privately-owned then those private owners would have the right to make searches a condition of using the transportation. But since it is the government which owns the transportation, it is limited in what it may do by the same rules that pertain to all other acts of government.
Couldn't they ask for her her ID then? Reality check: she didn't feign illness and demand to be let off the bus after the security checkpoint.
You demand a wall around the USA so Jose Illegal can't get a job cleaning toilets...but free and unfettered access to federal properties.
Well, actually I'm probably in the cut-Jose-some-slack minority here but the unpatrolled parts of our southern border and the 10 million or so undocumented foreigners here strike me as being a far more legitmate security concern than granny.
Again, the problem is oversimplification. You ignore everything except a 7 word sentence which you have extracted from a post, in order to remove it from context and use it to bolster your argument. You are lazy, if nothing else. If you think I am going to kill someone, then you have an obligation to report me immediately. But I will tell you, I am not on federal land, or on a bus, I am in the privacy of my own home in front of my computer, so be prepared for me to respond to your action in a very unpleasant manner.
You should lay off the sauce a bit....that's my opinion
Good for her.
She's just a common citizen riding a bus. There is no articulable probable cause to demand ID - which is not required in this country.
If the feds are that concerned about security, they shouldn't be letting public busses pass thru a secured facility. A vaguest glance at an ID (confirming only that she has something resembling ID, not that it means anything) is NOT security at all - it is, rather, a dangerous placebo. Violating the 4th Amendment in this case is moronic.
"Papiren, bitte" ("Papers, please") are among the most dangerous words in history. Acceptance thereof is a very bad sign that history is about to repeat.
I thought this seemed like a Du'er wannabee or something.
Can you show me where in the constitution is says you have a right to a "fair trial"?
"The Constitution limits the federal government to protecting our borders and making sure we have open trade between the states."
Well then, my friend we have a lot of work to do because the Fed has been doing a lot more than that. Taking money from my pocket and giving it to illegals for one. Building a bridge in Alaska for another.........
Remember, the issue at hand is checking IDs of people already on the bus. That photo indicates the pointlessness thereof.
Your sarcasm detector busted?
Couldn't a suicide bomber still carry an ID? It's not like they're afraid of being monitored in the future.
Yes, I agree with your points, However The issue is probable cause, it isn't that simple. Would you agree, that if the burden of proof has been met that someone is on or is about to board a subway or bus with a bomb, that no searches can be conducted on that conveyance, even thought the evidence is thought to be 99% accurate? We should forget about it and just wait to be blown to pieces?
Give me the document and bag search on this one...
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