Supreme Court okays suspicionless searches
Reuters:
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monday that police do not violate the constitutional right to privacy when a dog sniff of a vehicle during a lawful traffic stop turns up contraband.
The justices by a 6-2 vote, in a majority opinion written by Justice John Paul Stevens, set aside an Illinois Supreme Court ruling that such searches required reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing.
[...]
"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 possess does not violate the Fourth Amendment" protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, Stevens concluded.
Sigh.
In other words, even if the police have no reason to suspect the presence of drugs, they can still use a dog to stiff for them, the text of the 4th Amendment notwithstanding.
Justice John Paul Stevens, in his opinion for the Court, assures us that only the interests of the guilty are implicated here:
Official conduct that does not “compromise any legitimate interest in privacy” is not a search subject to the Fourth Amendment. [citation omitted] We have held that any interest in possessing contraband cannot be deemed “legitimate,” and thus, governmental conduct that only reveals the possession of contraband “compromises no legitimate privacy interest.”
But as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg notes in dissent:
Fourth Amendment protection, reserved for the innocent only, would have little force in regulating police behavior toward either the innocent or the guilty. Under today’'s decision, every traffic stop could become an occasion to call in the dogs, to the distress and embarrassment of the law-abiding population. [punctuation omitted]
And having decided that these suspicionless searches are justified by the nature of the information rather than the manner of its acquisition, where do they stop? Today, your car. Tomorrow, your crotch?