Ignorance of the law is defensible if you work for the government.
Police officers can use lethal force in car chases without fear of lawsuits.
Police can perform a "no-knock" raid as long as they have a reasonable suspicion that knocking and announcing their presence would be dangerous or futile.
Police can carry out warrantless searches on homes, cars, persons and property based on a "reasonable" concern that a suspect (or occupant) might be attempting to flee or destroy evidence.
Police can forcibly take your DNA, whether or not you've been convicted of a crime.
Police can subject Americans to virtual strip searches, no matter the "offense."
Police have free reign to use drug-sniffing dogs as "search warrants on leashes."
Police can conduct sobriety and "information-seeking" checkpoints.
Police officers are free to board a bus, question passengers, and ask for consent to search without notifying them of their right to refuse.
Police can arrest you for minor criminal offenses, such as a misdemeanor seatbelt violation, punishable only by a fine.
Refusing to answer when a policeman asks "What's your name?" can rightfully be considered a crime. No longer do Americans, even those not charged with any crime, have the right to remain altogether silent when stopped and questioned by a police officer.
Police may stop any vehicle as long as they have reasonable cause to believe that a traffic violation occurred. A vehicle can be stopped even if the driver has not committed a traffic offense.
Police officers can stop cars based only on "anonymous" tips. Police can also pull you over if you are driving too carefully, with a rigid posture, taking a scenic route, and have acne.
What many Americans fail to understand is the devastating amount of damage that can be done to one's freedoms long before a case ever makes its way to court by government agents who are violating the Fourth Amendment at every turn. This is how freedoms, long undermined, can give way to tyranny through constant erosion and become part of the fabric of the police state through constant use.
Phone and email surveillance, databases for dissidents, threat assessments, terror watch lists, militarized police, SWAT team raids, security checkpoints, lockdowns, roadside strip searches: there was a time when any one of these encroachments on our Fourth Amendment rights would have roused the public to outrage. Today, such violations are shrugged off matter-of-factly by Americans who have been assiduously groomed to accept the intrusions of the police state into their private lives.
So when you hear about the FBI hacking into Americans' computers without a warrant with the blessing of the courts, or states assembling and making public terror watch lists containing the names of those who are merely deemed suspicious, or the police knocking on the doors of activists in advance of political gatherings to ascertain their plans for future protests, or administrative government agencies (such as the FDA, Small Business Administration, Smithsonian, Social Security, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Mint, and Department of Education) spending millions on guns and ammunition, don't just matter-of-factly file it away in that part of your brain reserved for things you may not like but over which you have no control.
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