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

[Justin]

On 2004-06-22T02:52:15-0400, Gabriel Rocha wrote:
> 
> 		On Jun 21 2004, Steve Schear wrote:
> | 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.
> 
> Well, in principle this is a nice "screw you" method. But in practice...
> well, if you have to write down your name because the sound doesn't
> exist or can't be pronounced, you're that much more singled out eh...
> And for those of us who wish to travel, well, passports become difficult
> to manage I suspect. I am quite surprised with this ruling actually (I
> haven't yet read the specifics) but the first impression of it says that
> this does not bode well for opponents of the "War on Terrorism" (tm) or
> for anyone who doesn't like the great big database in the sky...

Yes, we're screwed, but not because of the name requirement.  Soon we will
have to recite our citizenship number whenever a police officer, I mean
pig, is "investigating an investigation" and asks us to identify
ourselves.  The supreme court will uphold that requirement for the same
reason they just upheld the NV law.  The number itself is not
incriminating, and the State has a substantial interest in knowing who you
are -- you may need medicating, or you may owe the government money, or
you may have violated any number of illegitimate laws and therefore need
reeducating in a federal prison.

-- 
"Once you knew, you'd claim her, and I didn't want that."
"Not your decision to make."
"Yes, but it's the right decision, and I made it for my daughter."
 - Beatrix; Bill  ...Kill Bill Vol. 2