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Texas Drivers Stopped At Roadblock, Asked For Saliva, Blood
schwit1 writes "Some drivers along a busy Fort Worth street on Friday were stopped at a police roadblock and directed into a parking lot, where they were asked by federal contractors for samples of their breath, saliva and even blood. It was part of a government research study aimed at determining the number of drunken or drug-impaired drivers.The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which is spending $7.9 million on the survey over three years, said participation was '100 percent voluntary' and anonymous. The 'participants' hardly agree."
I do not consent to living in a police state.
I do not consent to "federal contractors".
I DO NOT CONSENT
OR:
"These are not the droids you're looking for."
Don't let the fact that an armed man and his buddies just forced you off the road, in the dark, convey any kind of misleading impression about the voluntariness of what you are about to do the sensible thing and agree to....
Why not shoot anybody and everybody? That way, you'll certainly get all the rapists, murderers, etc.
The rights of somebody else granted by law should be respected even when they're violating the law.
In Australia it is called a 'Booze Bus'. They don't take blood, but they do the rest and it is 100% involuntary. They will block off freeways to test everyone and park cop cars in all the side streets.
Australia is a police state.
Personally I am mostly OK with this.
And this would be why.
The next morning when you see the huge line of cars left behind because the drivers were drunk justifies it to me.
Your ok with it cuz you believe ends justify means?
If authorities systematically searched everyone's homes without cause and installed cameras and microphones in every room I'm sure it would also bear fruit.
In Australia it is called a 'Booze Bus'. They don't take blood, but they do the rest and it is 100% involuntary. They will block off freeways to test everyone and park cop cars in all the side streets.
Personally I am mostly OK with this. The next morning when you see the huge line of cars left behind because the drivers were drunk justifies it to me.
I prefer the risks of liberty over the certainties of tyranny.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
"I do hope you get taken out by a drunk, drugged unlicensed driver whilst avoiding one of these."
I hope he runs over you first. Your belief in regard to what constitutes "freedom" is a hell of a lot more dangerous than some drunk driver.
--
"That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved." -- Benjamin Franklin, letter to Benjamin Vaughan, March 14, 1785.
This is not a contract. This is the law. Violating it isn't a contract dispute. It is a criminal offense.
But presumably many/most of the people who were involuntarily detained and intrusively searched weren't committing a criminal offence, so what is the justification for the detention and search?
We shouldn't allow carte blanche intrusions into people's lives in exchange for just doing something that is a normal or even necessary part of those lives such as travelling from place to place or communicating with someone else. It's like saying we should condone arbitrary, abusive security theatre at an airport because terrrsm, and everyone "accepted" that they could be mistreated in those ways by buying a ticket so they have no grounds for complaint.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
There were no on-duty police officers involved ...just off-duty officers and government contractors, illegally distrupting traffic, illegally collecting passive sensor data, even when consent was declined, and collecting a bunch of other information if you were willing to give it for free (the breathalyzer) or willing to be paid $10, $50, or $60, depending on how intrusive you let them get in exchange for money.
Everything about it was illegal; this was not a standard DUI checkpoint which contractors "embraced and extended", this was private citizens pulling over private citizens and collecting at least a minimum amount of data without consent.
This is a civil rights violation, and for each count where consent was not given after the fact, worth 20 years in a Federal prison.
Isn't this called kidnapping?
It was a running (bad) joke in TV/films of the 1970s/80s that muggers would frequently 'suggest' in very moderate and 'reasonable' language that their victims might like to consider giving them a 'donation'. The idea was that the situation was so clear, that the actual threat could be left implicit, as if this somehow reduced the criminality, or made the victim some kind of accomplice.
Of course, the mugger would ensure the victim was aware that he had a weapon (frequently dual use, like a screw-driver), so that a classic power game played out.
Now we see the police in the USA using the SAME tactic, but with one more refinement- the use of proxies/mercenaries/'contractors' to do the actual 'mugging' of citizens Human Rights, while the uniformed goons themselves stand to the side as 'back-up'.
Let me ask you all a question. Would you prefer your police-state to be upfront and honest, like say Stalinist East Germany, or Obama style, where everyone pretends the man with the gun and uniform who is forcing you do act against your will is just a friendly, harmless 'servant' of the people.
Would you prefer your mugger to be some lone pathetic loser, or a member of a well organised gang whose power and influence reaches into ever aspect of your city's administration and law enforcement? Team Obama not only abuses you, it pays massive amounts to PR operations so stories of the abuse are ignored or dismissed as untrue by your fellow sheeple.
You dont have any knowledge of either Australia or Police States.
Lol wut? look at u acting like u know me.
Anyone with half a brain does not use the word "cuz" (which is short for cousin in Australia and New Zealand and is typically used by junkies or people with as much intellegence as a junkie).
In these parts cuz is shorthand for because. After misspelling "intelligence", "don't" and s/drink/drunk/ you will forgive me for ignoring the ad hominem garbage.
You have a choice, you can simply not drive. No driving, no random breath tests.
I live in a State with a constitution protecting the rights of people to be left alone and not arbitrarily searched without cause.
Remember that driving is not an inalienable right, its a privileged and a privileged that drink drivers abuse
How does having a drivers license effect your constitutional right to not be searched without cause? For what legal reason does it even matter? Being on foot while drunk is also a crime why is a vehicle necessary to justify search without cause?
a privileged that drink drivers abuse
..hiccup...
Seeing as you're a fan of hyperbole, seeing as you're using ridiculous analogies against this, you are as culpable in road deaths as the drink drivers themselves (this is sarcasm to demonstrate the ridiculousness of the OP's analogy, for those who cant tell).
The only justification you had made for your position was it gets results. There is a falsifiability problem inherent in only asserting ends justify means. My analogy was only intended as a device to illuminate this problem so that it can be avoided in the future. Any statement which cannot be falsified contains no useful information.
What liberty?
They have absolutely zero probable cause or reason to stop random people just to see if they're innocent. Harassing people to check their innocence is a terrifying concept, and not something I'd expect from what a country that's supposed to be the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Since when has driving drunk been an inalienable right?
What a straw man. If they had evidence that each individual they stopped had been driving under the influence, then you'd have a point. Unfortunately for you, they're stopping people randomly, thereby harassing them and violating their rights.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
If you are using a public road then you are using someone elses property. It is completely within the rights of a government to bind usage of their roads to certain conditions.
I do not believe it is completely within the rights of a government to bind usage of roads to certain conditions, or usage of any public place to certain conditions. In fact, the government has privileges, not rights. It's a public place for a reason! It is public.
This is not something I believe happens in any free country.
If you don't like it don't use public roads, simple. By using them you implicitly agree.
That is absurd. Just like I don't agree to be molested by the TSA when I go into an airport, or I don't agree to give up all my rights when I go into public places in general, I do not agree, implicitly or otherwise, to have government thugs randomly harass me just because I want to drive on a public road! What part of this do you bootlickers not understand?
This is the logic of tyrants.
and most of the European countries are more free than the US these days.
Certainly not in that regard! And since when do you care about freedom? From my perspective, you've made it clear that you don't. For some reason, you're going to great lengths to justify this violation of freedom, and I have no idea why some people find the government's boots to be so tasty.
If the government exercises its right to (even randomly) check if people follow the rules on its own property it's not harassment.
It has no such right, or even privilege. We have something called the fourth amendment in the US, and no, they can't randomly decide it doesn't apply just because you're on a public road.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
I don't get the fuss over the word "contractors". Does it matter if they're permanently employed by the government or not?
If you don't think that the police should be granted power that is greater than that of any other person it doesn't matter.
If you think that the police should be allowed to stop people to check for drunk drivers it matters a lot. This is a limited power given to the police, should we really allow them to extend that power to whomever they like? Who is responsible if the contractor abuses that power?
If the contractor is responsible, what happens if the police consistently chooses abusive contractors?
It opens up a whole can of worms.
I've driven in the US and the standard of driving is absolutely shocking. Even ignoring the speeding (yes, everyone speeds over there) there is little to no lane discipline (keeping to the outside lane, people cant stay in their lane), I saw about 3 people indicate during my entire time, people will cut you off with little or no warning, people also slow down and stop with no warning (and I'm not talking about a gradual stop, they slam on the brakes), people push in, block intersections and completely disregard the lights (yellow means gun it, red means gun it more as you've missed the yellow). These are common things, not the odd occurrence like here in Oz.
Hey, Welcome to Boston!
Seriously, though, you speak as if driving in the US is a monolithic thing; it's not. When I lived in Boston, the motto was 'Don't use your turn signals, you'll be giving away your strategy'. Manhattan was even worse, since rather than dangerous, psychotic rules, there appeared to be no rules at all. On the other hand, in other places I've been (rural virginia, Utah, a couple of other places), drivers have been polite and safe. When I visited Australia, I was surprised at how the country felt the same culturally as I visited different places (Sydney, Darwin, Alice Springs, Cairns, Port Douglas) though the geography changed. In the US, people seem quite different in the different areas.
The more people I meet, the better I like my dog.
If you are sneaky you can even pretend to be more drunk than you are, so they don't prioritize your test on the assumption that you will still fail four hours later.
Dangerous tactic: if you test positive, even slightly, then they can say you were "very drunk" based on your behaviour.
OR...you could be smart and arrange for another ride home when you plan to be out drinking...just saying...some of us don't like games like this.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) 32,885 people died in traffic crashes in 2010 in the United States (latest figures available), including an estimated 10,228 people who died in drunk driving crashes, accounting for 31% of all traffic deaths that year. (http://www.centurycouncil.org/drunk-driving/drunk-driving-fatalities-national-statistics).
Depending on whose statistics you use, the number of innocent people maimed or otherwise permanently disabled by drunk drivers may exceed 100,000 victims per year.
Taking blood is ridiculous, But breathalyzers save lives. That many of the 10,000 people who die in drunk driving crashes are innocent people who are driving other cars, or are pedestrians, or are passengers, warrants road blocks and breathalyzers, especially on weekend evenings.
Yes, there should be a "red line" defining "reasonable" limits on police searches. But in America, the cost in deaths, pain, and suffering mean that to reduce the odds of some moron injuring me or my loved ones, I'll give up a reasonable degree of freedom and support politicians who promote breathalyzer roadblocks.
Live Long and Prosper - Thanks Leonard. You are missed.
Yeah, I know that this is what the first paragraph in the article says, but I have to wonder why KXAS even wrote that. The rest of the article specifically says the Fort Worth Police had no involvement - it was ran by the federal government, and they hired a few off-duty police officers - and that the Fort Worth Police was conducting an internal investigation about it.
This is again about the Federal Government overstepping their authority, and the federal government closing down a city road without consulting local law enforcement is horrible. The cities should really sue the federal government over this.
Moreso, Beach Street is an extreamely busy street, expecially now with all the construction in the area. The video says this is on the border of Fort Worth and Haltom City, and the video seems to confirm that area. This is a very busy area - I am usually over here a few times a month. The federal government closing off this area is inexcusable. I am sure that if someone had of called the FWPD about this when it was happening, the NHTSA contractors would have been arrested, and the off-duty officers placed on administrative leave - Fort Worth doesn't put up with that kind of crap.
Driving when you're clearly drunk is always a bad idea. But someone who's right on the limit: only had a couple of beers, and one of them turned out to be a higher strength than they thought: he's a lot less of a danger than half the people on the road anyway. I agree that drink driving is senselessly taking lives of people who would still be alive is drunks were more responsible, but heavy-handed enforcement of arbitrary restrictions doesn't help anyone.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
I'm almost afraid he means the 3rd...
Now some Vodka to get that picture out of my mind.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Sorry, but you are part of the problem. The fact that there is a legal amount you can drink and still drive is obscene. Passing the test is not the question. The question is whether you are a danger to others.
If you drink anything and get behind the wheel of a car before you are completely sober, you are endangering others. If you disagree, you are clearly ignorant of how alcohol affects judgement.