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> The courts need to get their heads out of the sand and restore the rights Americans used to have: I'm not sure what point in America's history we had all tho

> The courts need to get their heads out of the sand and restore the rights Americans used to have: I'm not sure what point in America's history we had all those rights. Plainclothes officers are quite old. There wasn't even a police/sheriff badge in most of the US until at least the mid-19th century. Undercover agents came about around prohibition (unless you consider spies to be undercover agents in which case, we've always had them). Wiretaps certainly predate the war on drugs. In fact, they became so widespread during WW1 that they were temporarily outlawed. Entrapment wasn't even a defense until the early 20th century. Dogs have been used as probable cause to search well before America existed - often to run down outlaws and root out their hiding places, even if they were in homes.

alexeisadeski3 13y ago
> Entrapment wasn't even a defense until the early 20th century. I've been thinking about this. And you know what, if the 21st century were like the 19th century, I probably wouldn't care about entrapment: - Drugs were legal - Alcohol was legal - Prostitution was (de facto?) legal - Gambling was (de facto?) legal - Price fixing was legal - Insider trading was legal - Braiding hair without a license was legal - Lots of other stuff was... legal. So hey, if all they're doing is entrapping thieves into thieving or murderers into murdering, I'm probably not going to be the guy freaking out about entrapment. But today, with lots of stuff not only illegal by statute but enforced with incredible zeal, I'm pretty comfortable being the anti-entrapment guy. And I'm pretty comfortable saying that entrapment is a modern problem, something which your American ancestors didn't have to deal with.