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Old 01-22-2013, 09:37 AM   #9
glatt
 
Join Date: Jul 2003
Location: Arlington, VA
Posts: 27,717
Quote:
Originally Posted by Adak View Post
I'm not familiar enough with the warrantless searches on people in cities back East, to know if it's unreasonable or not. Point is that ALL searches, according to the Bill of Rights, are NOT unreasonable - and therefore some are legal. Look at what the TSA is doing for air travelers, for crying out loud! THAT seems unreasonable to me.
That's unconstitutional too, IMHO. The idea is that public transportation is optional, therefor, it's OK to search anyone who uses public transportation. I think this is wrong thinking. Public transportation (buses, subways, trains, planes) is a way to get from one place to another, just as a public road or a public sidewalk is a way to get from one place to another. The founding fathers were very clearly opposed to just stopping people going about their business and searching them. They didn't want people to be searched simply because they were traveling. And it really is a slippery slope. If you can search people who have entered the publicly owned transit system because they have chosen to enter a system, you can also search people who have entered the public highway and road system. Nobody is safe. Or I should say, the only reason people aren't being searched on roads yet is because it's too difficult and the outcry would be too great. But if you just shrug and don't care that people commuting to work on the bus or a subway are being searched without warrants or probably cause, then you deserve to be searched in your car.
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