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What constitutes "unreasonable"? IANAL, but presumably, it would be doing something without having a good reason to do it, which is what's happening here. (Look

by javert 14y ago

What constitutes "unreasonable"? IANAL, but presumably, it would be doing something without having a good reason to do it, which is what's happening here. (Looking back, this looks sarcastic, but I didn't mean that sarcastically.) Under your way of looking about it, that whole amendment is completely worthless, because "reasonable" is anything. > balance the needs of the state against those of the people There is no such thing as a "need of the state" that is opposed to "needs of the people." They're one in the same. I'm not claiming this is obvious, but I'm claiming that it's true. (BTW, there are no "needs of the people" apart from "needs of specific, individual people.") Tangentially, your example of "avoidable" administrative searches actually is self-defeating. Air travel and road travel are completely analogous in every relevant way. So, the laws of the country are inconsistent. Specifically, if commercial air travel is avoidable ("Hey, just drive from North Carolina to California,") then so is car travel ("Hey, just walk to work every day"). I mean, hell, why don't we just "avoid" going out of the house each morning? The lawyers SHOULD go, "Hey, we can't stop cars on the roads without a reasonable cause, so we can't stop all air passengers, either." Of course, instead they'll just go, "Hey, now we can use the TSA to screen cars, too!" Talk about the erosion of rights.

tptacek 14y ago
The entire definition of "unreasonable" can be distilled to balancing, for any given circumstance, the privacy interests of the searched against the state's interests. Similarly, it's not productive to litigate whether the state properly has interests. This one, based on a couple hundred years jurisprudence, does: the state's interests include law enforcement, national security, and the safety of its citizens. You could then easily come up with a scenario in which a roadside search was lawful. For instance, SCOTUS has found some roadside sobriety checkpoints to be lawful (I am perhaps even angrier about sobriety checkpoints than I am about the TSA!) These aren't controversial points and they aren't points I made up. I feel like I have to keep saying this in every comment: there are more ways for laws to be wrong than "unconstitutional". I think the TSA is a farce and that it's offensive to core American values. But it's a farce that Congress was within its rights to create.

by javert 14y ago

tptacek 14y ago

The entire definition of "unreasonable" can be distilled to balancing, for any given circumstance, the privacy interests of the searched against the state's interests. Similarly, it's not productive to litigate whether the state properly has interests. This one, based on a couple hundred years jurisprudence, does: the state's interests include law enforcement, national security, and the safety of its citizens. You could then easily come up with a scenario in which a roadside search was lawful. For instance, SCOTUS has found some roadside sobriety checkpoints to be lawful (I am perhaps even angrier about sobriety checkpoints than I am about the TSA!) These aren't controversial points and they aren't points I made up. I feel like I have to keep saying this in every comment: there are more ways for laws to be wrong than "unconstitutional". I think the TSA is a farce and that it's offensive to core American values. But it's a farce that Congress was within its rights to create.