Tim May[SMTP:tcmay@got.net] wrote [...]

Last night had a plot device on "The Practice" (a generally bad show...I ought to stop watching) where nearly all residents in an upscale burbclave had signed a pledge--reminiscent of my opening point--where owners of cars would invite the police to stop their cars and search them without a warrant of any kind, without even today's lax probable cause. Obedient citizen-units would place a bumper sticker on their vehicles giving up their Fourth Amendment expectations of being secure in their papers and possessions. Those who didn't have the bumper sticker, well, there are a _lot_ of cops out there with nothing better to do between donut breaks than to stop cars without stickers for "suspicious reasons."

(I wonder what would happen if a bumper sticker said "I support the Fourth Amendment. Just in case you don't, I have a gun.")

Reality precedes fiction. Around Boston I sometimes see cars with an odd little sticker in the back window, white, round, with a stylized blue car in the top half (it can also be read as the face of someone wearing a fedora, peering out from under the brim). If you put one of these stickers on your car, you are giving the police permission to pull the car over without probable cause if they find it on the road late at night (1am-5am, or something like that), just to check that all is in order. I think it's being promoted as an anti-theft tool. I prefer the "This car protected by Smith & Wesson" stickers. "They that give up essential liberties to obtain temporary safety will soon have neither libery or safety." Peter Trei