If a police officer asked for my name while I was walking I might give it to him or her. I don't agree with it, but I don't want to be smacked on the head with a mag light. The majority of cops are OK, but there are plenty of neanderthals who exercise arbitrary power.

Chris, there are a lot of pseudo-conservatives. They have no acquaintance with history, and have no familiarity with the many historical examples of authoritarian nation-states that began by "innocently" abridging rights. They will learn the hard way.

I think someone notable said something to the effect, "It's a lot easier to give up your right than it is to get it back." If you look at this law very narrowly, that is, accept it on its basic principle, it does seem ridiculous that anyone would object to saying "My name's Bob. Here's my license." But in the context of your rights, in the larger picture of freedom, it should scare you.

If you don't make a fuss over things like this, the government will naturally try to take it to another level. It tries to get away with as much as it can. Today it's you must surrender your idenity. Tomorrow you MUST carry on your person a national ID card at all times.

"So what, you have to remember to carry a simple little card. If you can't remember to take it with you when you leave the house, you're an idiot," might be a comment made about requisite cards.

Then the government says, "Wow... we got away with that. How about we require all doorways to have a sensor that tracks when a national ID card passes through it, a sort of EZ-Pass for people?"

Add your own doom and gloom conclusions here.

It's easy to say it's ridiculous to not want to give out your identity, but at the same time, I think it's just as ridiculous to be required to give ID for walking down a street. It's a battle over lunacy. That's why things should just remain as they are. If a cop sees me and thinks something's amiss, follow me for a while or ask me, "hey, are you lost?" (which is what they do now -- I'm thankful it's happened to me a few times)

I would rather let 10 guilty guys go free before I live in a police state. I think those who think it's okay to go to jail for not handing over ID would disagree with that ideology.

Please see the "why we still need the Partriot Act" thread for even more lunacy and scary possible rights violations. (please note that I said possible)

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Meatwad get the honeys, see.

Simple example:

A passenger recently returned to the US on a cruise ship. Since this was an international re-entry, of course she had to identify herself.

She was promply arrested and hauled away.

For having on her record that she hadn't paid some sort of civil fine. Which she had paid, but anyone who's ever dealt with any database knows that once data gets entered, the final results often don't get correlated. Well the criminal databases are full of errors.

Sorry, under the US constitution, you simply are not required to give up any possessions or incriminate yourself.

I really don't understand the supreme court's decision here, I'll have to find the opinion. Unfortunatley it was a poor case to pursue (it's been in the news for a while as it wound its way up through the courts) because if I remember right, the defendent was suspicious in many ways. The police just handled it wrong, thus this court mess.

(Oh, and a brief Philadelphia story. Years ago I was riding on Kelley Drive after the pro cycling race. The cops came through yelling on people with their loudspeakers, threatinging some sort of punishment if we didn't get off the road. Mind you, riding on the road there is legal except rush hour, but as mentioned above, who wants to get hit over the head with a maglite/otherwise deal with the reprecussions of a police officer overstepping their bounds)