Privacy.....Could it Become a Part of our History?
The Supreme Court may attempt to take our right to be anonymous.
The U.S. Supreme Court considered on Monday whether people stopped during an investigation can refuse to give their name, a case that pits police powers against the rights to privacy and to keep silent.
The high court debated whether constitutional rights protecting against unreasonable searches and self-incrimination would be violated by a Nevada state law that requires detained individuals to identify themselves to the police.
The justices questioned whether the case has implications for a national identification card and whether the name must be given not only by those suspected of committing a crime, but also by witnesses to a crime.
"A name is the key to unlock data which is endless, given the state of technology," said Robert Dolan, a public defender from Winnemucca, Nev.
Dolan's arguments came in a case brought by Larry "Dudley" Hiibel, a feisty cattle rancher from Winnemucca who, during a roadside encounter with a sheriff's deputy in May 2000, refused 11 requests to identify himself. The attorney argued the law "tips the balance too much to the state" and it makes privacy "a nice principle to talk about as part of history."
Hiibel, a rancher, has said that he and his daughter were arguing about a boyfriend of whom he had disapproved, and that she had struck her father. Hiibel, now 59, was arrested under a Nevada law that considers a refusal to give one's name to a police officer to be misdemeanor obstruction of justice. The deputy, who was responding to a complaint that a man was beating a girl in the front seat of a parked pickup truck, found Hiibel standing outside the truck with the rancher's 17-year-old daughter, Mimi, inside.
Hiibel was convicted and fined $250. He appealed by challenging the state law. Hiibel soon became the focus of a national test of police powers and privacy rights — one that could have implications for counterterrorism efforts and proposals for national ID cards by helping to define whether cops can request ID whenever they decide it's necessary.
Nevada's Supreme Court upheld Hiibel's conviction by a 4-3 vote.
The high court led by Chief Justice William Rehnquist typically has favored law enforcement in disputes about police authority. Questions from some justices Monday suggested that they considered Nevada's law reasonable.
Identity "is probably a neutral fact," Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said. It is "not incriminating."
Dolan argued that requiring Hiibel to give his name violated the rancher's Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable searches and his Fifth Amendment rights to remain silent and avoid self-incrimination.
"That's one of our fundamental rights as American citizens, to remain silent," Hiibel told the Associated Press outside the court Monday.
If police can't ask witnesses to a murder for their names, Rehnquist asked, "how are you ever going to solve a murder case?"
But Justice Stephen Breyer said that requiring a person to give his name could be incriminating. "Suppose his name is Killer McGee?" Breyer asked.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked what other information a citizen might be required to give if his or her name is considered fair game: An address? A phone number? An e-mail address?
Justice John Paul Stevens asked how knowing a person's name promoted "an officer's safety." He said the case turns on a "very narrow Fifth Amendment" question "made more difficult in light of (proposed) national identity cards."
The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a brief in the case, opposes the proposed ID cards as an invasion of privacy. The ID cards are among a range of domestic counterterrorism measures being discussed by U.S. officials.
A decision in the case is likely by late June.