London Police are engaging in some of the most intrusive “Security Theater” imaginable. Sadly for them, they pulled over a UK Samidat this weekend.
This is what has been called “security theatre”: lots of action signifying little. Even the copper who carried out the search had the good grace to look slightly embarrassed.
Hit the link for the recap. Then go here for further thoughts.
In just the last several months, as DUI’s increased during the end of year holidays, the Democrat controlled Washington State Legislature was set to begin talking about writing a law that would legalize a genre of Security Theater skit called “DUI Roadblocks” so as to look like they were being “hard on drunk driving criminals”. Never mind that back when we had a sane state Supreme Court, the justices ruled that these roadblocks infringed on the free movement of citizens by violating their Fourth Amendment Rights.
The local press even joined in the act, getting the legislators plenty of film footage of grieving family members of DUI victims.
Then resistance built against the diea, and once again the local media went back out to the grieving family members to get them to say stupid things like “These are public roads and if you want to use them, you need to give up some of your privacy rights and let the police stop you so that other people can be safe.” Basically, the old “If you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about” argument, wrapped up in automotive guise.
I lost the link, but the Seattle Times even published a letter from one of these grieving family members which stated that if you refused to sign away your Fourth Amendment right when you renewed your drivers license, then you deserved to lose your driving privileges.
And that is where it ended. Oddly enough, I saw not one word about these roadblocks after that. Strangest damn thing. There must have been a public outcry somewhere that I missed, because there wasn’t one single Letter to the Editor, newspaper editorial, or even a blog post that I could find after that which promoted the idea “DUI Roadblocks”.