On Sun, 2004-01-11 at 13:57, Tim May wrote:
I don't know if he did, but of course there is no requirement in the U.S. that citizen-units either carry or present ID. Unless they are driving a car or operating a few selected classes of heavy machinery.
Many states do have laws allowing the police to detain a person for a period of time (varies by state) to ascertain the identity of that person, if they have reasonable suspicion that they are involved in a a crime. I'm not aware of any laws that specifically require a person to actually carry ID, but when I was stopped in NV several years ago, walking back to my home from a nearby grocery store at about 3am, supposedly because a 7-11 nearby had just been robbed, I was told that if I did not present a valid state ID I would be arrested, taken to the precinct HQ, fingerprinted, and held until I could be positively ID'd. The constitutionality of these laws are being challenged. In Hiibel vs. NV, Hiibel refused 11 times to identify himself to police before he was arrested (illegal under NV statute). The NV Supreme Court has upheld the law, with a few dissents: "The dissent then pointed out that the Ninth Circuit federal appeals court not only upholds the right to refuse to provide identification to an officer before arrest, but has specifically found Nev. Rev. Stat. B' 171.123(3) unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment. The dissent opinion criticized the majority for "reflexively reasoning that the public interest in police safety outweighs Hiibel's interest in refusing to identify himself," noting that no evidence exists that an officer is safer for knowing a person's identity. "What the majority fails to recognize," the dissenting opinion continued, "is that it is the observable conduct, not the identity, of a person, upon which an officer must legally rely when investigating crimes and enforcing the law." The US Supreme Court has agreed to review and is scheduled to hear arguments this year. http://www.epic.org/privacy/hiibel/default.html --bgt