Constitution? What Constitution? We Don't Need No Stinking Constitution.

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The New American:

TSA Stages Highway Searches to Show Its Tennessee Valley Authority

First it was airports. Then it was bus and train stations. Now, under the Transportation Security Administration’s Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR) program, even the highways aren’t safe from the TSA’s prying eyes and probing fingers.
“Tennessee is now the first state ever to work with the TSA to deploy a simultaneous counterterrorism operation statewide,” according to Nashville’s WTVF-TV. That operation, which involved the TSA along with the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security (TDSHS) and state and local police, was deployed at “five weigh stations and two bus stations across the state,” the station reports.

It was a two-pronged approach, the report adds. Government agents were “recruiting truck drivers … into the First Observer Highway Security Program to say something if they see something.” At the same time, “the Tennessee Highway Patrol checked trucks with drug and bomb sniffing dogs during random inspections.”

One might expect the searches to make recruiting more difficult; but at least one truck driver, Rudy Gonzales, seemed willing to assist the TSA just the same. He told WTVF reporter Adam Ghassemi: “Not only truck drivers, but cars, everybody should be aware of what’s going on, on the road.”

The searches, of course, are a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment, which requires government agents to obtain a warrant based “upon probable cause” prior to searching a person’s “houses, papers, and effects.” No warrants had been issued; and none of the trucks, buses, drivers, or passengers was suspected of any wrongdoing. In fact, TDSHS Deputy Commissioner Larry Godwin specifically stated that the VIPR operations were “not based on any particular threat,” according to the Jackson Sun.

What, then, was the purpose of the searches? Godwin “said the checks at the weigh stations were about showing the people of Tennessee the government is serious about transportation safety, and to make sure the state is ready in case something were to happen,” wrote the Sun. (He also warned that “later this week similar inspections will be done at airports across the state,” the paper reports.)

Randomly searching passing trucks when there is no specific threat in view hardly seems like a “serious” approach to protecting the traveling public. Rather, it seems more like another attempt “to subjugate, control, and intimidate citizens until they degenerate into docile dependents of the police-state,” as Becky Akers described earlier TSA “security theater” presentations. She elaborated:

Governments benefit enormously from searching their subjects — especially when those searches can ensnare anyone at any time in any place. Such random rubbings guarantee that almost everybody will obey his rulers’ decrees. What American pothead will stuff a baggie of weed in his pocket before leaving home if he knows cops will probably frisk him on the street? Likewise, what Chinese Christian totes a Bible with him? Will a Moslem in Saudi Arabia carry a bottle of wine to his friend’s home when invited to dinner?

Then there is the matter of recruiting truck drivers — and, says WTVF, “every driver” — to act as snitches for the state.

“Somebody sees something somewhere and we want them to be responsible citizens, report that and let us work it through our processes to abet the concern that they had when they saw something suspicious,” Paul Armes, TSA Federal Security Director for Nashville International Airport, told the station.

Those familiar with the Stasi, the secret police of East Germany, will recognize this modus operandi all too well. The Stasi, under the leadership of Erich Mielke, maintained an extensive network of informants — potentially as many as one out of every seven East Germans — to keep the state up to date on the thoughts and movements of everyone in the country. Says Wikipedia: “A large number of Stasi informants were trolley conductors, janitors, doctors, nurses and teachers; Mielke believed the best informants were those whose jobs entailed frequent contact with the public.” Truck drivers surely fall into this category.

Undoubtedly many Stasi informants thought they were doing their patriotic duty by snitching on their friends, neighbors, and relatives. Some may even have helped prevent genuine crimes. Likewise, many Americans who find something suspicious — a Bible, a turban, or even a Ron Paul bumper sticker — about their neighbors may believe they are doing the right thing by reporting their suspicions to the police when, in fact, they are helping to destroy everyone’s God-given, constitutionally protected rights. The TSA’s informant program has a long way to go to reach the size or depravity of the Stasi’s; but its very existence is a significant and dangerous step in that direction.

That VIPR — pronounced, appropriately, “viper” — is not merely, or even primarily, about combating terrorism but about establishing government control is made clear by a statement from Godwin. Noting that western Tennessee is a heavily traveled area, Godwin said, “Everything from Wal-Mart merchandise to illegal drugs and illegal immigrants are transported through this area. Current interdiction units are doing a good job, but further coordinated inspections will only strengthen their efforts. If we prepare for the worst, then we are ready for almost anything.”

One doubts that those Congressmen and Senators who voted to establish the TSA intended for it to be used to fight the (unconstitutional) War on Drugs or to stop illegal immigration. But mission creep is a problem in any bureaucracy, and more so in one given such a wide berth as the TSA. Few legislators dare criticize the TSA lest they be accused of siding with terrorists, and so the agency’s ongoing violations of the Constitution and basic human decency continue apace.

State and local police departments, unfortunately, cannot be counted on to defend their citizens against federal overreach, either. Besides the Tennessee Highway Patrol, notes the Sun, “various police departments across the state, including large departments such as those in cities like Knoxville, Chattanooga, Nashville and Memphis were involved in the checks at the weigh stations.”

“Where is a terrorist most apt to be found?” asked TDSHS Commissioner Bill Gibbons. “Not these days on an airplane; more likely on the interstate.” Gibbons was correct. But the people terrorizing Americans on the interstate are not swarthy foreigners; they’re government agents.

Detroit Free Press:

Drivers face drug checkpoints on highways near Flint

This sign was posted Tuesday for several hours on I-69 near Flint, one of a series of checkpoints by the Genesee County Sheriff's Office. / Jamie Fricke

Motorists driving on expressways around Flint are getting surprised by a stunning tactic that the Genesee County sheriff has been using to fight the flow of illegal drugs -- one that legal experts said will not withstand a court challenge.
At least seven times this month, including Tuesday, motorists have said they have seen a pickup towing a large sign on I-69 or U.S.-23 that depicts the sheriff's badge and warns: "Sheriff narcotics check point, 1 mile ahead -- drug dog in use."
The checkpoints are part of a broad sweep for drugs that Genesee County Sheriff Robert Pickell and his self-titled Sheriff's Posse said are needed, calling Flint a crossroads of drug dealing because nearly a half-dozen major roads and expressways pass in and around the city. Pickell said he decided to try checkpoints when he learned that drug shipments might be passing through Flint in tractor-trailers with false compartments.
"We're doing everything by the book," Genesee County Undersheriff Christopher Swanson said. "We think there's major loads (of drugs) coming through here from all over, every day. And this is one of the tools we use -- narcotics checkpoints."
He said the dogs are used to sniff around the vehicles to check for drugs.
The practice has legal experts on searches and seizures at two law schools in Michigan, a constitutional law expert in Lansing and the American Civil Liberties Union calling the practice out of bounds and out of touch with state and U.S. Supreme Court rulings that ban such practices.
Based on a case out of Indianapolis, the U.S. Supreme Court held in 2000 that narcotics checkpoints where everyone gets stopped on a public road are not legal and violate Fourth Amendment protections against illegal searches and seizures, professor David Moran at the University of Michigan Law School said.
Wayne State University Law School professor Peter Henning said police can set up roadblocks to search all who pass by, but only if a crime has just been committed.
And Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton, who said he was not consulted by Pickell about the checkpoints, said that after a court challenge, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled in 1990 that so-called "sobriety check lanes," put in place to nab drunken drivers, were illegal.
The new practice of narcotics checkpoints "certainly brings up probable-cause issues," Leyton said Thursday.
Leyton said he has no power to stop the practice, however. That, he said, would require someone arrested at a checkpoint to contest the evidence in court.
The checkpoints have caused an uproar, officials said. And, as a result, the sheriff's office has altered its methods: Instead of using the checkpoints daily -- even Sundays when they started at the beginning of the month -- they are used sporadically. And instead of stopping everyone, law enforcement has been putting the signs out and waiting for a motorist to make an illegal U-turn in the freeway median to try to avoid the checkpoint, thus giving them cause to pull the driver over and search the vehicle.
But even that method raises question, U-M professor Moran said. The technique has not been tested in Michigan courts, he said. But judges would take a dim view of it because "it's perilously close to entrapment," he said.
"It's just the kind of shabby treatment that the Fourth Amendment was designed to prevent," Moran said.
Among the groups of motorists most stunned by the checkpoints are state-registered medical marijuana users and caregivers. Pickell and Swanson said the checkpoints weren't meant to target medical-marijuana users, but word of the new tactic spread quickly through that community.
Many registered users and caregivers told the Free Press they now fear driving near Flint, even when they possess their medical-marijuana registry cards.
At a checkpoint Tuesday afternoon just west of Flint on I-69, officers pulled over only those who saw the checkpoint sign, then made an illegal U-turn on the freeway, Jamie Fricke, 31, of Lapeer said.
"But my buddy went through this on Monday and he said they were pulling over all enclosed trailers. They had drug-sniffing dogs out that day," on I-69 east of Flint, in Burton, she said.
Fricke, a state registered medical-marijuana user, said she had a small amount of the drug with her, but her car was not searched.
Larry and Diane Foster, both of Muskegon, said they saw a checkpoint Oct. 5 in which officers were stopping every motorist on eastbound I-69.

"We were going in the opposite direction or we would've been stopped," said Diane Foster, 55, a state-registered medical-marijuana user and caregiver. "I had medication (marijuana) on me, so I don't know what the outcome would've been."

Epaminondas comments: Next will be special identifying stickers on your windshield so those more equal than others can just keep going, FOR A FEE OF COURSE.