"First
They Came for the Drunks..."
Information
courtesy of Lawrence Taylor - DUIblog
I mentioned
in an earlier post ("Are Police Watching Your Home? ")
that police agencies, urged on by the the President's Commission
Against Drunk Driving, have begun to assign officers to stakeout
the homes of individuals on probation for DUI -- sometimes for days
-- waiting for them to violate their probation by driving.
Aside
from the obvious objections, of course, the larger concern is that
if police can watch the homes of those with DUI records today, what
legally is to stop them from watching your home tommorrow? Do we
really want police staking out our homes, waiting for us to make
a mistake?
Commenting
upon this, Scott Henson has reported on his weblog the efforts of
the federally-funded Center for Transportation Analysis to require
cars to be equipped so they will not start without first inserting
a valid driver's license in an ignition interlock device. This is
but one of many ideas proposed to deal with drunk drivers. What
is of greater interest, however, is the CTA representative's explanation
of how Americans' "historical" concerns about invasion
of privacy and Big Brother can be overcome -- by initially demonstrating
the technology on unsympathetic targets who "have fewer privacy
'rights' ":
"American
society historically resists excessive government intervention
and Big Brother programs that threaten to invade privacy,"
Hu says. "One of the biggest challenges to implementing electronic
driver’s licenses will be to secure widespread public acceptance
and community support." Hu thinks that the U.S. public will
be more likely to accept this technology if it is first demonstrated
on high-risk drivers. "Targeting a demonstration project
at drivers who might have fewer privacy 'rights,' such as convicted
DUI offenders, might reduce public concern about invasion of privacy,"
she says."
[Note:
the quotes around the word "rights" have not been added.]
As
Mr. Henson paraphrased: "First they came for the drunks, but
I was not a drunk so I did not speak up....."
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