[IP] When police ask your name, you must give it, Supreme Court says (fwd from dave at farber.net)

Steve Schear s.schear at comcast.net
Mon Jun 21 22:38:01 PDT 2004


>WASHINGTON - A sharply divided Supreme Court ruled Monday that people who
>refuse to give their names to police can be arrested, even if they've done
>nothing wrong.
>
>
>The court previously had said police may briefly detain people they suspect
>of wrongdoing, without any proof. But until now, the justices had never held
>that during those encounters a person must reveal their identity.
>
>The court's 5-4 decision upholds laws in at least 21 states giving police
>the right to ask people their name and jail those who don't cooperate. Law
>enforcement officials say identification requests are a routine part of
>detective work.

Not a problem.  Its legal to use any name you wish, including those that 
use gyphs and sounds which cannot be represented by standard Roman and 
non-Roman alphabets (as is common in some African tribes).  So, those that 
wish to avoid this data base nightmare can legally adopt name which does 
not conform.

Steve 





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