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

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.