A BLOW TO PRIVACY

Perhaps it's not the stuff of massive outrage. But a U.S. Supreme
Court decision issued last Monday -- which allows drug-sniffing dogs to
sniff a car during a routine traffic stop -- represents another small
erosion of privacy and personal freedom.

Freedoms are generally lost little by little, often by giving
authorities just a little more latitude in difficult or ambivalent
circumstances. We fear Illinois v. Caballes, which reversed the
Illinois Supreme Court, will come to be seen as another small step in
the slow but steady erosion of privacy.

Roy Caballes was stopped in Illinois for going 6 mph over the speed
limit. While the officer was writing a warning, a second officer with
a drug-sniffing dog came to the scene and had the dog walk around the
car. When the dog alerted on the trunk, the officers opened it, found
marijuana and arrested Caballes.

The trial court refused to suppress the marijuana evidence. But the
Illinois Supreme Court held that it should have been suppressed,
finding that there were no specific facts discovered during the
traffic stop to suggest drug activity, and that use of the dog had
unjustifiably enlarged a routine traffic stop.

The Illinois court had it right. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in
dissent, argued that the decision "clears the way for suspicionless,
dog-accompanied drug sweeps of parked cars along sidewalks and in
parking lots. ... Nor would motorists have constitutional grounds for
complaint should police with dogs, stationed at long traffic lights,
circle cars waiting for the red signal to turn green."

It's worth noting that this decision applies only to drug cases, not
to dog-sniffing searches for explosives, which might arguably be more
justified in this era of uncertainty and potential terrorism. It
simply carves out a little larger space in what might be called the
drug-war exception to the Fourth Amendment, which requires that
searches be based on probable cause and require a warrant from a judge
before they are conducted.

Thus the fundamental assumption behind a free society -- that except in
extraordinary circumstances people should be free of official
surveillance and invasion of their persons and properties -- is eroded
just a bit more.