KEEP THE HOUNDS AT BAY, OR I'LL SUE

As a compelling attention-getter, there's nothing quite like a nose in
the crotch.

An uninvited nose, I hasten to add.

This one was large, wet and attached to the snout of a German shepherd
- - which was in turn leashed to the brawny right arm of a brush-cut,
flint-eyed, humourless-looking chap with a badge on his chest and a
Glock-nine on his hip.

Where was this happening - a DMZ border crossing between the Koreas? A
lockdown weapons inspection site outside Baghdad's Green Zone? Nope.

This scene was playing out in the bucolic outskirts of Toronto -
Pearson International Airport to be precise. I was standing in a
lineup in Terminal Two, waiting to board a flight to Thunder Bay.

The Mountie and his faithful furry companion were sauntering up and
down the lines of passengers checking crotches, shoes, baby-strollers
and carry-ons.

"Just a random drug check," Robocop muttered, by way of
explanation.

Like that made it OK.

We are a placid, docile flock, we Canucks. I'm old enough to remember
a time when I would have slugged any stranger waving a metal wand next
to my nether regions, but nowadays I submit to the "pre-screen
boarding" grope with nary a bleat. I even undo my belt and hold out my
arms on request.

So it was with the "random drug check" at Pearson. No one in the long,
snaking lineup - including yours truly - complained about the gross
and gratuitous invasion of privacy. This happened five years ago. It
burned me then and it burns me still.

How did it come to pass that we all came to behave like gonad-deprived
sheep and to surrender our dignity so meekly?

Well, some, but not all of us. Some brave soul at St. Patrick's High
School in Sarnia, Ont. had the courage to blow the whistle on the
whistle-blowers.

Back in November 2002, students at St. Patrick's looked up from their
books to behold a squad of Ontario's Finest, complete with sniffer
dogs, descending upon their school. The students were confined to
their classrooms for over two hours while the dogs and their handlers
snuffled backpacks and nosed through lockers.

Acting on a hot drug tip, right? No, there was no tip and there was no
search warrant. In fact, the police were acting on a "standing
invitation" from officials of the St. Clair Catholic district school
board to drop by their schools whenever they felt like it and root
through the students' belongings at will.

No doubt the school officials justified their policy with that tired
and shameful maxim always mouthed by the Babbits of this world to
excuse yet another surrender of personal sovereignty: "If you've got
nothing to hide, you've got nothing to worry about."

It is a mantra that's been parroted by Nazis, Stalinists, Trotskyites,
Maoists and other assorted homicidal control freaks and their
functionaries ad nauseam down through the ages.

And it's wrong.

And some Sarnian, praise be, objected when the random sniffers invaded
St. Patrick's high school. And it wound up in court.

The case has taken five and a half years to work its way through our
judicial system, but finally the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled
that, no, police and their dogs cannot harass ordinary citizens
whenever the spirit moves them.

Specifically, the court ruled "the dog-sniff search (in Sarnia) was
unreasonably undertaken because there was no proper justification . No
doubt ordinary businessmen and businesswomen riding along on public
transit or going up and down on elevators in office towers would be
outraged at any suggestion that the contents of their briefcases could
randomly be inspected by the police without reasonable suspicion of
illegality."

Bang on.

About a century ago, an American Supreme Court justice by the name of
Louis Brandeis said: "The right to be left alone is the most
comprehensive of rights and the right most valued in civilized man."

Greta Garbo weighed in on the subject, too. "I never said 'I want to
be alone,'" the famous actress said. "I only said 'I want to be left
alone.' There is all the difference."

Indeed there is. But try to explain that to a German
shepherd.

Arthur Black is a syndicated humour columnist.