Here are some helpful phrases you may soon need in Amerika.
Papiere, bitte. (Papers, please.)
Jobstep heraus, bitte. or Austeigen, bitte. (Please get out (of a vehicle).)
Senken Sie Sie keuchen, gefallen. or Die Hosen fallen lassen, bitte. (Take your pants down, please.)
Verbiegen Sie rüber, bitte. (Bend over, please.)
(quote)
J.D. Tuccille - your About.com Guide to: Civil Liberties
Thu, Nov 11, 1999
Free to travel?
Dateline: 11/8/99
Americans are lucky when it comes to traveling within our own borders,
right? We don't have to flash the internal passports that some out-and-out
police states require before citizens can go from point to point. We don't
have to run gauntlets of officials checking our papers, pawing through our
possessions, and asking us our business. And we're never rousted en route
for no good reason.
Oh, all right, that's some country, but no longer America.
Have you flown a commercial airliner recently? A real joy, isn't it? These
days, travelers are advised to arrive at the airport up to two hours before
departure for domestic flights. Once you're there, a ticket isn't enough to
board a plane — photo ID is required by most airlines (not by law, as I
originally thought, though you'll not hear that volunteered at the ticket
counter, and "alternate procedures" are required of airlines that don't
demand ID).
You're better off carrying two IDs, just so you have something
to fiddle with while being interrogated by the clerk at the counter (her
questions are cleverly designed to elicit the information that you're really
Carlos the Jackal's minion bent on doing no good).
After you've shown your ID, you have the pleasure of watching security
personnel X-ray your carry-on luggage and sometimes paw through the
contents. If you're lucky, you won't correspond with the current profile of a
likely drug mule with a condom full of smack shoved where the sun don't
shine. A bad shave or a squint in the wrong direction could condemn you to
a few hours with your pants down around your ankles under the prying eyes
of a DEA agent.
Buses are better; at least you don't have to show ID and detail the folks
who might've accidentally brushed against your luggage on the way to the
Greyhound terminal. But bus rides can be more exciting than you expect.
Ever since the Supreme Court's Bostick decision in 1991, police have been
free to board buses and ask to toss through the assorted laundry and
lingerie without showing a warrant.
The Sheriff's Department in Broward County, Florida, where the events
leading to the Supreme Court decision took place, called this "working the
buses." According to the Supremes, reasonable folks can still say "no" and
excuse themselves and their luggage from the prying eyes of the local
constabulary.
That travelers might feel a tad intimidated at a truck stop in
the middle of nowhere under the scrutiny of unfamiliar cops didn't seem too
impressive to high-court justices who, we can presume, have rarely tried to
wedge themselves into a seat on an intercity over-nighter.
But there's always your car, right? You don't need anybody's permission to
turn the key in the ignition, there's no security crew X-raying the Christmas
presents before you head for the Interstate, and the car is all yours. Well,
except that, as we're all told these days, driving isn't a right, it's a privilege.
It's unclear who originated that particular fib (imagine, working isn't a right,
it's a privilege! Or, cooking isn't a right, it's a privilege!), but it's been a
handy tool for cramping the ability to go from Point A to Point B. For
starters, you need a driver's license which might as well be an internal
passport, considering that it's awarded only on the sufferance of the
powers-that-be and must be shown on demand to anybody with a piece of
tin pinned to his polyester shirt.
Then there's the gauntlet of roadblocks and checkpoints that police
departments have erected around the country as part of the great War on
Drugs — or sometimes drunk driving, or whatever is troubling the locals.
You stop, flash your ID, and hope that you don't match yet another profile
of big, bad drug couriers. If you're black and male and have just been
stopped at a checkpoint, now is a great time to undo your belt and drop
your trousers — it saves time. Even away from official checkpoints,
minorities are pulled over on the road so often that it's called being busted
for "driving while black."
That's just the beginning of the fun. Some jurisdictions, particularly in
Louisiana, have become notorious for swiping traveler's vehicles for the
slightest pretext under asset forfeiture laws. Want your car back? You'll
have to sue and prove the innocence of yourself, your car, and any
possessions you had with you.
Seizure-minded cops can poke through your
possessions in search of a reason to cruise away in your new Caddy because
of a series of Supreme Court decisions best summarized by 1982's United
States v. Ross, which found that "[p]olice officers who have legitimately
stopped an automobile and who have probable cause to believe that
contraband is concealed somewhere within it may conduct a warrantless
search of the vehicle that is as thorough as a magistrate could authorize by
warrant." The Fourth Amendment hasn't gotten any vitamin shots since
then.
In fact, traveling these days is an exercise in submitting to a higher
authority — that authority being anybody drawing a government paycheck.
Setting foot in an airport is a guaranteed nostalgia trip through the old
German Democratic Republic.
Bus and train travel isn't in the same league in terms of intrusiveness — not
yet, anyway. But seeing America by road or rail is a crapshoot that might
find you standing by the side of the highway in Li'l Abner's hometown,
trying to explain to State Trooper Bubba that your refusal to let him tear
through the luggage isn't meant as personal disrespect.
And to climb into an automobile, that epitome of American individualism, is
to hang a sign around your neck saying "search me, I'm yours."
Don't forget to have your papers in good order.
I've left out international travel, because that's an area where we've
surrendered so much to anybody with an X-ray machine and a rubber glove
that it rates it's own series of columns.
No, the United States aren't yet reduced to the status of those tin-pot
hellholes where you need explicit permission to go more than a few miles
from home. But we're not as far from that scenario as we like to pretend.
(unquote)
For further info, please refer to:
http://civilliberty.about.com/culture/issuescauses/civilliberty/library/weekly/aa11 0899.htm
[This message has been edited by Dennis (edited November 11, 1999).]
Papiere, bitte. (Papers, please.)
Jobstep heraus, bitte. or Austeigen, bitte. (Please get out (of a vehicle).)
Senken Sie Sie keuchen, gefallen. or Die Hosen fallen lassen, bitte. (Take your pants down, please.)
Verbiegen Sie rüber, bitte. (Bend over, please.)
(quote)
J.D. Tuccille - your About.com Guide to: Civil Liberties
Thu, Nov 11, 1999
Free to travel?
Dateline: 11/8/99
Americans are lucky when it comes to traveling within our own borders,
right? We don't have to flash the internal passports that some out-and-out
police states require before citizens can go from point to point. We don't
have to run gauntlets of officials checking our papers, pawing through our
possessions, and asking us our business. And we're never rousted en route
for no good reason.
Oh, all right, that's some country, but no longer America.
Have you flown a commercial airliner recently? A real joy, isn't it? These
days, travelers are advised to arrive at the airport up to two hours before
departure for domestic flights. Once you're there, a ticket isn't enough to
board a plane — photo ID is required by most airlines (not by law, as I
originally thought, though you'll not hear that volunteered at the ticket
counter, and "alternate procedures" are required of airlines that don't
demand ID).
You're better off carrying two IDs, just so you have something
to fiddle with while being interrogated by the clerk at the counter (her
questions are cleverly designed to elicit the information that you're really
Carlos the Jackal's minion bent on doing no good).
After you've shown your ID, you have the pleasure of watching security
personnel X-ray your carry-on luggage and sometimes paw through the
contents. If you're lucky, you won't correspond with the current profile of a
likely drug mule with a condom full of smack shoved where the sun don't
shine. A bad shave or a squint in the wrong direction could condemn you to
a few hours with your pants down around your ankles under the prying eyes
of a DEA agent.
Buses are better; at least you don't have to show ID and detail the folks
who might've accidentally brushed against your luggage on the way to the
Greyhound terminal. But bus rides can be more exciting than you expect.
Ever since the Supreme Court's Bostick decision in 1991, police have been
free to board buses and ask to toss through the assorted laundry and
lingerie without showing a warrant.
The Sheriff's Department in Broward County, Florida, where the events
leading to the Supreme Court decision took place, called this "working the
buses." According to the Supremes, reasonable folks can still say "no" and
excuse themselves and their luggage from the prying eyes of the local
constabulary.
That travelers might feel a tad intimidated at a truck stop in
the middle of nowhere under the scrutiny of unfamiliar cops didn't seem too
impressive to high-court justices who, we can presume, have rarely tried to
wedge themselves into a seat on an intercity over-nighter.
But there's always your car, right? You don't need anybody's permission to
turn the key in the ignition, there's no security crew X-raying the Christmas
presents before you head for the Interstate, and the car is all yours. Well,
except that, as we're all told these days, driving isn't a right, it's a privilege.
It's unclear who originated that particular fib (imagine, working isn't a right,
it's a privilege! Or, cooking isn't a right, it's a privilege!), but it's been a
handy tool for cramping the ability to go from Point A to Point B. For
starters, you need a driver's license which might as well be an internal
passport, considering that it's awarded only on the sufferance of the
powers-that-be and must be shown on demand to anybody with a piece of
tin pinned to his polyester shirt.
Then there's the gauntlet of roadblocks and checkpoints that police
departments have erected around the country as part of the great War on
Drugs — or sometimes drunk driving, or whatever is troubling the locals.
You stop, flash your ID, and hope that you don't match yet another profile
of big, bad drug couriers. If you're black and male and have just been
stopped at a checkpoint, now is a great time to undo your belt and drop
your trousers — it saves time. Even away from official checkpoints,
minorities are pulled over on the road so often that it's called being busted
for "driving while black."
That's just the beginning of the fun. Some jurisdictions, particularly in
Louisiana, have become notorious for swiping traveler's vehicles for the
slightest pretext under asset forfeiture laws. Want your car back? You'll
have to sue and prove the innocence of yourself, your car, and any
possessions you had with you.
Seizure-minded cops can poke through your
possessions in search of a reason to cruise away in your new Caddy because
of a series of Supreme Court decisions best summarized by 1982's United
States v. Ross, which found that "[p]olice officers who have legitimately
stopped an automobile and who have probable cause to believe that
contraband is concealed somewhere within it may conduct a warrantless
search of the vehicle that is as thorough as a magistrate could authorize by
warrant." The Fourth Amendment hasn't gotten any vitamin shots since
then.
In fact, traveling these days is an exercise in submitting to a higher
authority — that authority being anybody drawing a government paycheck.
Setting foot in an airport is a guaranteed nostalgia trip through the old
German Democratic Republic.
Bus and train travel isn't in the same league in terms of intrusiveness — not
yet, anyway. But seeing America by road or rail is a crapshoot that might
find you standing by the side of the highway in Li'l Abner's hometown,
trying to explain to State Trooper Bubba that your refusal to let him tear
through the luggage isn't meant as personal disrespect.
And to climb into an automobile, that epitome of American individualism, is
to hang a sign around your neck saying "search me, I'm yours."
Don't forget to have your papers in good order.
I've left out international travel, because that's an area where we've
surrendered so much to anybody with an X-ray machine and a rubber glove
that it rates it's own series of columns.
No, the United States aren't yet reduced to the status of those tin-pot
hellholes where you need explicit permission to go more than a few miles
from home. But we're not as far from that scenario as we like to pretend.
(unquote)
For further info, please refer to:
http://civilliberty.about.com/culture/issuescauses/civilliberty/library/weekly/aa11 0899.htm
[This message has been edited by Dennis (edited November 11, 1999).]
