Wear the yellow star...
I had this article from wired forwarded to me yesterday, and its kinda wiggy. Basically, a guy and his girlfriend are parked by the side of the road, are approached by the police because of a domestic disturbance report (people reported them fighting).
Police show up, and immediately ask to see ID, guy asks what the problem is and refuses to show his ID until he's told what he did wrong, gets arrested, goes to jail, and has to pay a fine for obstructing an investigation. All domestic violence charges against him get dropped. There's a video of it here.
It's not as though the police were complete a**holes or something, which is cool. The issue isn't really with their behavior, but rather the protocol & laws. They were investigating a report of a disturbance and if there is suspicion of a crime or intent to commit a crime they can ask. It really seems to comes down to whether or not you can handle the idea of police asking anyone at any time to show ID, and if not, they go to jail/pay fines.
There are reasons why you could argue in favor of it, but there are enough nightmare scenarios that it just isn't a good path to go down, especially with the upcoming advent of things like RFID and national databases. I know the thought of scanners picking up and logging every place I go from the ID in my pocket is kinda wiggy to me. Put on your yellow stars.
Posted by drunkenbatmanFebruary 27, 2004, at 04:29 PM
