Probable Cause

Once upon a time, in the land that would one day become the United States of America, law enforcement officers of the King of England were allowed by the King to stop and search citizens of the land without the need for specific warrants.

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On The Truman Show, Jim Carrey played a character whose every move was available to the television-viewing public 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, all his life.  Carrey’s character, Truman Burbank, had been adopted by a corporation as a baby and raised on an island within a domed “stage” constructed specifically to turn his whole life into one big reality show.  Near the end of the movie, Truman discovers the truth and manages to escape his faux world, presumably finding a real life of privacy.

In “reality,” this can only happen in the movies.

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More than once recently, I’ve written about Submitizens. Several criminal defense attorneys in Fresno, California, where my office is located, simply shrug.  Among other things, they can’t understand why this bothers me so much.

But it does bother me.  Immensely.  And, frankly, it seems to me that it should bother any right-thinking true-blooded American citizen.  At the very least, it should bother criminal defense attorneys; we should understand the implication of this latest governmental insult.

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A concept near and dear to my heart for years now has re-surfaced in the news. For many years, I made my living working with computers. Prior to being an attorney, I worked with the first two Internet Service Provider companies in the Fresno area. This was immediately after the first Internet web browser (Mosaic) was developed and the Internet “went commercial.”

Being of a philosophical bent and also with a strong interest in Anthropology, I couldn’t help but ponder some the impact the Internet was having on our world. And, of course, privacy issues were quickly becoming paramount.

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