PRIVACY UNDER ATTACK

Fourth Amendment Protections Against Unreasonable Searches Have Been
Repeatedly Battered By The Supreme Court, And A New Case Isn't Likely
To Alter That Pattern.

As the 20th century comes to an end, it is a good time for Americans
to take stock of their constitutional liberties. No other nation
affords its citizens the rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution,
rights that too many Americans take for granted or are too willing to
compromise in the pursuit of what they consider higher goals.

The First Amendment, which protects freedom of the press, freedom of
speech and freedom of religion, among other rights, is the most
important. Can you imagine an America without those rights? Yet,
surveys show that many Americans believe the press has too much
freedom, that campaign reform is more important than free speech and
that school prayer does not offend the Constitution.

So far, most of the major assaults on the First Amendment have been
turned back, but the only thing we can be sure of is that the attacks
will continue.

Sadly, some of our other precious liberties have been diminished by
the courts and by the Clinton administration, which has one of the
worst records on civil liberties of any administration in this century.

Consider the damage that has been done to the Fourth Amendment, which
protects Americans from unreasonable searches. It was designed to put
limits on what the government may do in the name of law enforcement.
In recent decades, the U.S. Supreme Court has been steadily weakening
our Fourth Amendment protections. In case after case, the court has
broadened law enforcement's power to invade privacy without having to
justify the intrusion with evidence of criminal activity. The result
is a withered right that is today as much historical relic as privacy
shield.

To get around the clear wording of the Fourth Amendment, the court has
resorted to semantic tricks, narrowing the definition of what
constitutes a search. According to the court, it is not a search if
the government rifles through your trash, hovers over your backyard
with a helicopter and high-powered binoculars, listens in on your
cellular phone conversations, reviews your bank records or enters a
home where you are a temporary guest. The court says we don't have a
reasonable expectation of privacy in any of these endeavors.

The court has also said that the use of drug-sniffing dogs to ferret
out drugs hidden in luggage and cars doesn't constitute a search for
the purposes of the Fourth Amendment.

Now the court has taken a case that could drive the stake a little
deeper into the heart of our privacy right. It will decide this term
whether the police may indiscriminately squeeze someone's luggage on a
bus while looking for drugs.

The case of U.S. vs. Stephen Dewayne Bond is typical of the Fourth
Amendment cases that have come before the court: A drug dealer caught
with narcotics is appealing the way in which the police found the drugs.

These cases do not present sympathetic sets of facts, but the
principles at issue are more important than whether one lowly drug
dealer gets away with his crime. What's at stake is our right to
demand that the government present good cause before invading our
private property.

Bond was a passenger on a bus traveling to Arkansas. When the bus
stopped at an immigration checkpoint in Texas a border patrol officer
boarded the bus. He conducted an immigration inspection during which
he felt and squeezed all the overhead luggage. In the bag that
belonged to Bond the officer felt a "brick-like" object that turned
out to be methamphetamine.

Bond claimed the squeezing of his bag was an unreasonable search since
the officer was on a fishing expedition and had no cause to believe
Bond was carrying drugs. But a federal appeals court said that Bond
was not searched at all. The courts said the squeezing of luggage does
not implicate the Fourth Amendment since the bag was stored where
fellow passengers might move and handle it. If other passengers are
free to handle a bag, the court said, then so are police.

The case will be heard by the Supreme Court this term. Before ruling,
the justices should put themselves in the place of those bus
passengers. Would it feel like a violation of privacy to watch an
officer systematically manipulate each bag overhead trying to discern
what's inside? Of course it would.

Our government was formed by men suspicious of an over-reaching police
force. They purposely devised a set of rules to prevent Americans from
being subject to dragnet searches and arbitrary intrusions of
authority. But the Fourth Amendment is only as strong as the Supreme
Court says it is.

Unfortunately, the more the court speaks on this issue, the more
damage it does.