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U.S. Supreme Court: Public Anonymity No Right

Posted by timothy on from the facial-recognition-renders-this-a-moot-point dept.

Anonymous Arrestee writes "Today the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that anybody can be compelled at any time to identify themselves, if a police officer asks. People who refuse to identify themselves, even if they are not suspected of a crime, will be arrested. Sound Orwellian? The Supreme Court also said people who are suspected of another crime might not be subject to arrest for not revealing their name. On this latter point, someone will have to bring a separate case. And the SCOTUS is at liberty not to hear any case it doesn't like. The case is Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada [pdf]. Previous Slashdot story here."

3 of 1,492 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Huh? by Timothy+Brownawell · · Score: 0, Redundant
    So, lemme get this straight. You're NOT suspected of a crime and refuse to identify yourself, you get arrested. You ARE suspected of a crime and refuse to identify yourself and you DON'T get arrested? That's pretty fucked up.
    Uh, if you're suspected of a crime, then wouldn't you get arrested for that *regardless* of whether you agree to identify yourself?

    Tim

  2. Re:Often Moot - but it's still dangerous by Timothy+Brownawell · · Score: 0, Redundant
    Also, since the police can arrest you for withholding your name, if you are trying to avoid being arrested for an outstanding warrant, they can hold you indefinitely - simply by asking you your name every 24 hours until you tell them (so they look up your outstanding warrants). Yep - forced self-incrimination.
    B.S.

    The reasoning against forced self-incrimination is that the answer may not be true, just temporarily convinent. Thus, people could be forced to incriminate themselves for what they didn't do. This question cannot be used for that.

    It's an open-ended question, not a directed question they could try to force a particular answer to; its "What's your name?", not "Are you So-and-So?" "No" *thwack* "Are you So-and-So?" etc . And even if they were allowed to phrase it that way, there's still the matter of physical description.

    My guess is that there will be a future case that gets to the supreme court, where an innocent person in a legal demonstration refuses to give their name, gets arrested, and refuses for weeks to give their name - and gets held by the police without any realistic opportunity to be set free. Then maybe the court will realize what they've done.
    Verry funny. They could, at any time, simply tell them their name and end the whole thing. Or they could go to court over it like this guy did and try to argue that the police didn't have sufficient reason to ask. That *is* kinda the point of legal demonstrations, you know.

    Tim

  3. 'John Doe / Jane Doe' Gambit - A question.... by iamcf13 · · Score: 0, Redundant

    What happens when one gives a fake (but plausible) name to the cops without producing ID?

    If the cops want to be (absolute) hardcases (thanks to the events of Tuesday, 2001-09-11 in the USA), they'd just arrest you and 'take you downtown' anyway so what's the point.

    Imagine this situation happening to an undercover human rights worker documenting atrocities in order to expose them. If this situation happened to them they would be in serious trouble!

    Now imagine if this scenario happened to somebody (wildly) famous like William Henry Gates III....
    (No, I'm not counting the speeding incidents from the 1970s I've heard about).

    At this rate, 'Your papers, please' is probably just around the corner unless this type of stuff can be stopped....