Unreasonable Searches When Going to Work?

Chico Science asks: "I'm a scientist, not a lawyer, so I'm a little beleaguered by the fact that since 2001-Sep-11, I have been forced to submit to searches on my campus as I enter buildings. I work at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD, and have been shouldering the burden of increasingly draconian security measures. Most recently, they've instituted a policy of 100% bag/package searches on entering buildings. Initially it didn't bother me, but after having my bag searched on my way to my car (which was also thoroughly inspected) after work, I decided I'm not comfortable subjecting myself to searches of my personal belongings at every turn. I want to know if I have a right to refuse searches? And why should it be considered acceptable for me to relinquish my Fourth Ammendment rights so I can go work on in my lab?" In this climate of increasing security consciousness, how far can vigilance go before it becomes an invasion of our rights?

Comments

Democracy at work

[gentlewizard]

To paraphrase a line from the movie Crimson Tide:

"We're here to sell things in a democracy, not to practice it."

Manufacturing plants have always had searches like this. You'd be amazed what walks out of the plant in lunchboxes, etc. What is new is that we white collar workers are starting to be subject to the same rules that blue collar workers have had to put up with for decades.

It's a Risk vs Annoyance Thing....

[dschuetz]

Most recently, they've instituted a policy of 100% bag/package searches on entering buildings.

I'm more concerned why they're not checking your bags when you exit the buildings!

Truthfully, in the government world (especially in the Intelligence or Defense communities, but I can understand it happening in key health-related establishments like NIH, too), employees are subjected to more stringent security than in most private companies. Mostly, they're restricted to preventing guns going in or information going out.

I wouldn't be surprised if, eventually, the 100% check got reduced to a 50% spot check or something. But the big question still remains -- "how far can vigilance go before it becomes an invasion of our rights?"

I don't have an answer to that. In certain professions, you give up some 4th amendment rights (such as submitting to drug testing if you drive a train), in others, you give up certain rights of association (yes, they still ask you if you belong to the communist party when you get a clearance). I'd say it's a necessary balance between protecting the public (or nation) from risk, and protecting individual rights.

Hopefully, eventually, one will calculate the overall risk to the organization to certain threats. Like, what's the chance of someone bringing in a grenade? What would they have to gain from that action? What's the potential damage? It's a RISK = THREAT * DAMAGE calculation. Then you structure your security program around those calculations, for each risk type.

Eventually, they may determine that the risk associated with not having an in-bound bag check (that is, the sum of all risks that could be averted with such a check) may be at such a level that they can reduce the 100% bag check to a 100% badge check and 10% spot check on bags.

All this is simple risk management theory, though...where, the question was asked, is the line between group and individual rights? I'd suggest that you could perform an "Annoyance" measurement -- multiply frequency of checks by time wasted in line waiting your turn and by embarrasment caused when they find the bottle of, say, viagra in your briefcase, and you get some arbitrary measurement of the "SEARCH COST" against employees. Better to include, also, things like a measure of the chance that employees will get sick of the searches and find a new job, or that productivity will drop due to reduced morale.

The line, then, is when the ANNOYANCE level outweighs the RISK level. Something could be very annoying, like a 100% outbound bag check for departing toxins, but as long as the RISK is very high, it's reasonable. On the other hand, if someone decides to check for explosives in every package within every car upon entry to, say, a desert park where there are no humans for a hundred miles (and, thus, a low risk for harm), then your rights to privacy should win out.

Or something like that. Of course, all the numbers used in such a calculus are totally arbitrary, so it'd also be important to make up-front "value judgements" to calibrate the system against "obvious" cases where a search is good, or where it'd be bad...

You might try skimming FindLaw.com for stuff, I'm sure there's got to be some caselaw or opinions on this. It sort of relates to drug checks, sobriety checkpoints, and workplace monitoring, to some degree.

If you find any very good resources, or get real advice from an attorney, be sure to post a follow-up story...

Re:Why does Everything require a Lawyer?

[sigwinch]

If only the Chinese dissidents at Tiananmen Square had been "packing", those tanks wouldn't have stood a chance.

That statement is absolutely accurate. Undefened tanks (and planes, ships, etc.) are hideously vulnerable. A bunch of primitives can simply walk up to a tank that isn't defended by infantry and jam its treads with sticks and rocks. Then they can build a fire underneath it at their leisure and cook the tank crew to death. All mechanized weapons are similarly vulnerable. Look at what a couple of random attackers were able to do to the U.S.S. Cole with a raft, fertilizer, and oil.

If you can take out the infantry guarding the mechanized weapon, you can destroy the weapon. If you have small arms, you *can* take out the infantry.

I am so tired of this absurd argument by gun nuts that citizens with pistols, rifles, and shotguns can successfully defend themselves against a government gone bad.

The argument, however, is true. If every block of a city is defended by a modest supply of small arms, the city is unconquerable. Destroyable, perhaps, but unconquerable. If there are enough defenders with guns, and the government-gone-bad doesn't have the will to exterminate the city, the revolution is successful.

Tanks, planes, and bombs are relatively immune to some bunch of yahoos with Glocks, Rugers, and Colts.

You can only be conquered if the enemy can send in flesh and blood people to impose their word as law. If you have small arms, you can keep sending those would-be conquerors back home in coffins indefinitely. If the would-be conqueror is not willing to use weapons of mass destruction, they must eventually withdraw.

Small arms also tend to keep the police and other government enforcers reasonable. If John Suspect might be carrying a gun, law enforcement won't be nearly so quick to put him in a position where he has nothing left to lose. Ditto for prospective mass murderers, muggers, rapists, and so forth.