American Defense Enterprises

The current Supreme Court has had a series of recent rulings that have led to further and further restricting of the protections offered by the fourth amendment, best one is this one which basically says that if you can get a search warrant by “mistake” that anything you find is still ok — remember it had to be a mistake (wink wink).

However, in the most recent ruling, the protections offered were actually expanded.  Specifically:

For the police to search your car, they now must meet one of two conditions:

1. The suspect being arrested must be out of police control AND within contact distance of the vehicle.
2. -or- there must be reasonable suspicion that evidence of the crime for which the arrest is being made is present in the car.

The first condition is for police safety, the second is probable cause.  This is a somewhat rational ruling…  What was the law before the ruling?  Police were able to handcuff a speeding suspect, lock him in the police car, and then search for drugs and weapons or other possible who knows what crimes — after all, the fact they were in a car clearly means that they have no right to privacy……  Perhaps a little overreaching .

Some addtional references:

What to do during a traffic stop (youtube video). — The FlexYourRights youtube channel.

And of course, http://www.flexyourrights.org/ and http://www.aclu.org/,

The ACLU, defenders of Rights 1 and 3-10 of the Bill of Rights

UPDATE: California just also made a ruling regarding 4th amendment rights in your car.  Here, specifically, the aquiescence to a search of the truck of a car was NOT an aquiesence to a search of the passenger compartment.  Further, handing the keys over to search the truck and remaining silent during the passenger compartment search were not mitigating factors in the reducing the rights of the suspect in protecting the privacy of his passenger compartment.