No Right to Public Anonymity

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2004

via SlashDot

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that a police officer may compell anyone to identify themselves even if they are not suspected of a crime. This just seems wrong to me. Why should I, if I have done nothing wrong, and am doing nothing suspicious be required to give my identification to a police officer whom I don’t know and don’t trust?

In practice this probably doesn’t make much difference except to make it more convenient for police officers to stop people without cause (they don’t have to think of a reason anymore). Still we are seeing a constant erosion of our individual liberties and privacy protections in the U.S., and it sickens me.

here is a pdf of the supreme court’s decision and here is a link to the defendants website about the case.

What do you think?

By UltraBob at 09:02 AM Link to this post here!
2 comment s


  • on June 23rd, 2004 02:14 AM kevin said:

    hmmm.... can’t really tell completely from the tape regarding why the police were asking for ID, but it doesn’t sound like he was just randomly selected.  Someone called them becaue they were fighting.  I can’t tell from the tape if “mimi” called or not, and i just read a bit of the PDF, but it says

    “during an investigative stop involving a reported assault. Nevada’s “stop and identify” statute requires a person detained by an officer under suspicious circumstances to identify himself.”

    It doesn’t say (as you have in your post)

    “ if I have done nothing wrong, and am doing nothing suspicious be required to give my identification to a police officer ”

    The PDF also says

    “Here, the initial stop was based on reasonable suspicion”

    And

    “If he chooses either to state his name or communicate it to the officer by other means, the statute is satisfied and no violation occurs.”

    He didn’t seem too cooperative there (of course the officer didn’t even *ask* him his name…

    The Supreme Court also makes note of the fact that the person wasn’t just being arrested for some trivial matter because they couldn’t find anything else to arrest him for

    “The request in this case was a commonsense inquiry, not an effort to obtain an arrest for failure to identify after a Terry stop yielded insufficient evidence.”

    Then there is this:

    “The man appeared to be intoxicated”

    I would agree, though I can’t trust my own impression because maybe that’s just how people in Nebraska talk and act. If the police thought he was drunk, I’m glad they stopped him from diving off again.

    If they were there because someone reported an assault, what should they have done? Just got in their car and left because the guy didn’T cooperate?  What if he was assaulting “Mimi”? Or, less likely, maybe Mimi was assaulting him, and after the police left they just went on assulting each other… what if someone is injured or killed (it’s been known to happen)? Then the police get balmed for not stopping it earlier when they were called the first time.  Either way, they were called there to check it out, and from what I see on the video, he was not cooperative in the least.

    The Supreme Court did not exaclty “ruled today that a police officer may compell anyone to identify themselves even if they are not suspected of a crime” as you say. They ruled that in this case, the policeman had ample cause to ask for the man to Identify himself, and that none of the man’s constitutional rights were violated given the circumstances.

    Now, compare that to when I was stopped by the police a while back for being a suspected terrorist. (that’s the reason the policeman gave me… “we have stepped up anti-terrorism efforts) I had just walked out of the station and was unlocking my bike. I didn’t talk to anyone, didn’t make eye-contact with anyone, didn’t bump anyone (so I know noone went to the police to compain about me) and he just came over and asked for my ID. I gave it to him without resisting of course, but I also gave them #### for stopping me with no reason.  Then another guy I don’t know came by and started yelling at the policeman about how stupid it was and he is embarrased to be Japanese. Then the policemans boss came out, told him to give me my ID back, and that was about it… Now that was an un-called for stop if I ever saw one.

  • on June 24th, 2004 03:52 AM John McDonald said:

    I haven’t read the case, but from what your first commenter wrote it sounds to me like this was a cut and dry Terry stop.  Under the precedent setting Supreme Court case of Terry v. Ohio and a police officer can ask an individual to produce identification, and even perform a brief pat-down search strictly for weapons when he has reasonable suspicion to believe that the person has been involved in the commission of a crime.  The officer may also briefly detain the individual in question.  What exactly gives an officer “reasonable suspicion” is quite a ticklish question and to my knowledge the court has never given a cut-and-dry definition of this.  So although this may seem to be, and may in fact be an erosion of privacy, this isn’t a new development unless this case expands upon the previous scope of the terry stop.  Hope this helps.  For more info try and search for Terry v. Ohio on http://www.findlaw.com
    -John