[SentraSE-R]

cujet,

We're too far removed from the age of travel by horseback, warring with flintlocks, and messaging by quill pen to be living under a static Constitution. The courts have had to adjudicate the constitutionality of telephone eavesdropping, car searches, GPS tracking, immigration stops, and dozens of other Fourth Amendment questions. They've got Facebook bullying cases in the pipeline. The results are far from perfect, but they're what we have to live by. Like it or not, "SCOTUS says so" is our standard for constitutionality. Like it or not, immigration checkpoints are constitutional, despite your denials.

The Constitution is a plain language document, and it's nice to imagine living in such an ideal America. Unfortunately, I don't think any of the Founding Fathers imagined multiple courtrooms in every county of every state litigating 8 hours/day, 5 days/week, 52 weeks/year for 230+ years to produce the abomination that's our current living Constitution. We can thank (or blame) an overabundance of lawyers and our own litigious society for that. The only way your plan language legal system will work is if we outlaw progress and we all get along, and I guarantee you that will never happen.

Once upon a time, we could probably ride a horse to the next town with some reasonable expectation of privacy, but now we live in a world where felons with Uzis and MAC-10s gun down cops from inside tinted windows of SUVs. The license plate readers and database technology that prompted this thread didn't exist 10 years ago. While Frank and others would love to forbid them, they needn't bother, because they will be obsolete and replaced by something like NFC parking meters, OBDIII, or OEM GPS systems that will make Onstar look like a horse-drawn buggy. You can bet that both government and business interests want to know your shopping habits, gas-purchasing habits, and how often you visit your girlfriend. They know they can't get those data legally by snooping, so they'll get them via an extension of the PATRIOT Act, or something similar.

What is DHS' justification for random searches of private aircraft? I"m sure you didn't just consent to such an unconstitutional search.