Too Many Laws
In Chicago, there is a law against driving your car on the streets of Chicago while using a cell phone. And you know, I remember and episode of MythBusters where they tested the responses of two people driving on a specially-designed course (with straight paths, curves and differing turns) (1) when they were sober, (2) when they were legally intoxicated, and (3) when they were talking, answering the same questions, on a cellular phone. They actually found that when both drivers were talking on the cell phone, their response time was even worse than it was when they were legally intoxicated. But, in such a liberal town, it seems to make sense to make it illegal to talk on the cell phone while driving (I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to kill people for the inadequate driving, to then find out they were talking on their phone).
BUT (yes, I all-capped that for a reason) when I think about it, there is already a law in effect that people on cell phones could be pulled over with. “Distracted driving” it what it’s called, and anyone could be pulled over if their driving is at all impaired by talking on their cell phone, or putting on make-up, or eating, or I don’t know, texting, or changing clothes while driving, or... anything else.
These laws are already in place. Why do we need a new law? I mean, I know members of Congress and the Senate can call themselves “lawmakers,” but they really don’t need to make a career out of creating additional repetitive (and therefore useless) laws.
As the years have passed, more and more laws have made their way into driving your car, and no one has questioned it. Consider the older law of wearing your seatbelt. It seems like a good idea, it will protect you in a car accident. However, what it comes down to is this: is that something lawmakers should really have control over? Insurance companies can charge more in their rates for people involved in accidents who were not wearing a seatbelt. See, that’ show the market starts to solve the problem without adding more laws. I know that during some holidays (probably the ones where people will be pulled over more often for driving under the influence( cops also watch for people who are not wearing their seatbelt. What it then amounts to is a way for the cops to get more money into funding the police department. But my husband explained to me that he heard from his state police officer father that typically the cost of issuing of a ticket (even when the fees charged with the ticket were high) cost more than the actual fine received.
Wow, does that stat hold true even in Chicago? They have high fines with tickets in Chicago... Well, there were high fines in the state of Pennsylvania at the time, and that stat held true there. I don’t know if it’s the court time the processing of the fines take up, or having to have an officer on duty to sit and wait for these violations to issue tickets, or what, but it’s scary to think that these efforts with these laws might actually be costing us more money.
Oh, another law passed in Illinois: as of January 1st 2008, people are not allowed to smoke in any public building – and in Chicago, you’re not allowed to smoke on the Lakefront (so if you want to go to the beach to enjoy the water, you can’t even smoke outside there).
Wow, they are restricting smoking in public, and the Lakefront. It’s funny, at the Lakefront, they don’t allow you to bring food or drink, and now you are not allowed to smoke (you know, where the wind form the lakefront will disperse smoke). I know people go to the beach in Chicago to either get some sun or walk your dog or play volleyball, but it seems a bit of a pain to force people to purchase water at an insanely high price from a beach vendor. So much for picnicking at the beach to enjoy time with your family.
And as for smoking in bars or restaurants ...I’ve been to a lot of bars and restaurants, and the smoke hasn’t really bothered me. I can think of only one place where the smoke from people in the bar bothered me. This bar, right by our house, has people smoking right by me, and the smoke seems to be magnetically drawn to me every time they light up (which seems to be all the time). And like every other bar around in Chicago now, they have that big filter in the center of the room on the ceiling, but it doesn’t seem to do much good at this one bar. So a part of me (at least for this one bar by my house) thinks this is a great idea.
But in the same respect, I know a bar in the Chicago suburb of Skokie (which I never had a problem with the smoke in) who had smoking allowed in their bar before it was outlawed in their town. They actually had provisions made for the smoking law to allow them to allow smokers in the bar – because they had a lot of business, and cutting smokers would cut a lot of people from this major social venue in Skokie. It sounds silly, but people decided to go there, and the smoking wasn’t that big of an issue in the first place, and people who decided to go there knew what the environment was like. They were okay with it, and lawmakers adjusted the law to accommodate them.
And I think that’s what it should really come down to. Smoking may suck for nonsmokers, but I made the choice to go to bars where people might smoke whenever I was old enough to drink. It was a choice I made, and I never felt like I should tell someone else they shouldn’t smoke (in this relatively public place, I know it’s privately owned, but they invite the public into their establishment...). If I really hated the smoking that much, I wouldn’t have gone.
Which I suppose might apply to the bar by my place right now, but I have never complained about smokers while I was there. Smoke in bars was my problem that someone else was smoking at a place I decided to frequent.
I remember when I was little, by dad smoked, and when we drive anywhere, I always sat behind him in the station wagon. He always had the air on, the windows were rolled up, and then he’d light up a PallMall. The smoke could go right toward me since I was behind him. I’d ask about opening the window, and he’s say no way, we’ve got the air on, So there I sat. And no, that’s not a cool thing, and I don’t think people should have to be around smoke if they don’t want to. But we’re adults now, so if we have an issue with smoke in a certain public place, we could just stop going there. Smoking isn’t cool, but it isn’t illegal, so the choice should remain ours. It shouldn’t be the choice of lawmakers to decide who can smoke what legal substances where.
Right after 9/11/01, lawmaker passed a slew of laws to stop such an atrocity from ever happening again to innocent people in our country. Everyone was in a fervor about this attack with out own airplanes on our iconic New York buildings and on the Pentagon, and everyone wanted to do something – even if all they could think of doing was passing a law or two to help stop future terrorist attacks.
And there were people out there who had problems with the way the Bush administration dealt with the 9/11 situation (like attacking Iraq because they actually thought that Iraq had something to do with the attacks, when it was pretty obvious to me that Iraq had nothing to do with it). Bush haters are probably still insanely mad that President Bush didn’t get up from reading with kids immediately when he heard a plane struck a building in New York (sorry, but showing panic would instill more panic in everyone, which is not his job, and without adequate information there wasn’t much he could instantaneously do anyway). These dissenting people (and probably a lot than just the dissenters) saw problems with the then-passed Patriot Act.
I was originally going to write an editorial about only the problems with the Patriot Act. Because there are a lot of people who have found problems with it, and I have never been particularly fond of the idea of giving our government that much leeway in investigating anything, and possibly overstepping boundaries and infringing our rights as citizens of the United States. I found a web posting by Xeni Jardin 09/26/07 that quoted Kurt Opsahl of the Electronic Frontier Foundation:
‘Judge Ann Aiken of the Oregon Federal District Court ruled that two provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), “50 U.S.C. 1804 and 1823, as amended by the Patriot Act, are unconstitutional because they violate the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution.”’
Our government conducted warrantless surveillance on an Oregon attorney whom they believed was possibly associated with a Madrid bombing. This assumption occurred because of mistaken fingerprint identification. Bloomberg even published an update to this story, where people from our government state they believe with the Patriot Act is constitutional.
In “Judge Strikes Down Part of USA Patriot Act” (posted by Daniel J. Solove), he explains that “To understand the judge’s ruling, a bit of background is necessary, and it is easiest to provide a brief excerpt from my article, Reconstructing Electronic Surveillance Law, 72 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 1264 (2004):
FISA creates a different regime for surveillance to obtain “foreign intelligence” information than the ECPA regime that governs regular government surveillance. The regime created by FISA is designed primarily for intelligence gathering agencies to regulate how they gain general intelligence about foreign powers within the borders of the United States. FISA is very permissive; it provides for expansive surveillance powers with little judicial supervision. FISA permits electronic surveillance and covert searches pursuant to court orders, which are reviewed by a special court of eleven federal district court judges known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (“FISC”). The court meets in secret, with the government presenting applications for orders ex parte. If the government receives an adverse decision, it can appeal to a three-judge panel.
FISA’s protections against surveillance are much looser than those of the ECPA. Under the ECPA and the Fourth Amendment, surveillance is only authorized if there is a showing of probable cause that the surveillance will uncover evidence of criminal activity; under FISA, however, orders are granted if there is probable cause to believe that the monitored party is a “foreign power” or “an agent of a foreign power.” Unlike the ECPA, FISA surveillance is therefore not tied to any required showing of a connection to a criminal investigation. FISA does not have this safeguard since it is about gathering general intelligence about other countries and their activities within the United States. FISA orders can last for ninety days as opposed to thirty days for an ECPA order.
FISA was designed to address the issues left open by the Supreme Court in United States v. United States District Court (commonly known as the “Keith” case), 407 U.S. 297 (1972). In that case, the Court distinguished between three types of surveillance:
(1) electronic surveillance for domestic criminal investigations — the Court held a warrant with probable cause is required pursuant to the Fourth Amendment.
(2) “domestic security surveillance” — the Court held that “different standards may be compatible with the Fourth Amendment if they are reasonable both in relation to the legitimate need of Government for intelligence information and the protected rights of our citizens.”
(3) surveillance of “foreign powers or their agents” — the Court declined to indicate whether the Fourth Amendment would apply to this kind of surveillance but suggested that warrantless surveillance of foreign agents “may be constitutional.”
So, to sum up, there are three categories of surveillance — (1) domestic criminal surveillance gets strong Fourth Amendment protection (warrant and probable cause); (2) domestic security surveillance gets less stringent protection under the Fourth Amendment (reasonableness); and (3) foreign intelligence surveillance may or may not be covered by the Fourth Amendment, the issue remaining unresolved.
This set the stage for FISA, which operates in category (3) above. Congress sought to avoid Fourth Amendment problems by confining FISA to situations involving the gathering of foreign intelligence from foreign powers or agents. That’s why, in order to get a FISA order, the government had to establish that the purpose of the investigation was gathering foreign intelligence and that it had probable cause that those under surveillance were foreign agents.
Thus, FISA operates in a zone that is supposedly left open under Fourth Amendment law (which would require a warrant to engage in wiretapping and many other forms of surveillance). The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) of 1986 (which incorporates Title III, commonly known as the “Wiretap Act”) regulates domestic wiretapping and surveillance and is designed to comport with the Fourth Amendment’s requirements (it is sometimes even more protective than the Fourth Amendment). If FISA doesn’t apply, government surveillance is governed by the stronger protections of ECPA.”
But the more I looked at the question of overstepping boundaries in the with the Patriot Act, the more I wondered if we were once again just creating more laws to restrict our own freedoms, when a lot of laws already exist. Consider that the United States was started in turbulent times, there probably were laws covering how to deal with these turbulent issues (I mean, we did start this country by battling another country, we weren’t nonviolent objectors when this country was started). And when the Marine Corps started, they were even battling Barbary Pirates who were blackmailing the United States from across the ocean (in Tripoli, the first lines of the Marine Core Hymn are “From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli”). But apparently, when the United States was just starting, we “attacked Tripoli under circumstances that are eerily similar to contemporary times” (according to the Thomas Jewett article “Terrorism In Early America: The U.S. Wages War Against The Barbary States To End International Blackmail and Terrorism”).
My point from all of this is that we started this country fighting battles like this, and although circumstances may be slightly different, we probably already have courses of action that have existed in our histories to solve our problems – and adding more laws might not be the solution.
Copyright © 2008 Janet Kuypers.
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