Supreme Court to Decide Mandatory ID Case Mar 22, 4:45 PM (ET) By GINA HOLLAND WASHINGTON (AP) - Do you have to tell the police your name? Depending on how the Supreme Court rules, the answer could be the difference between arrest and freedom. The justices heard arguments Monday in a first-of-its kind case that asks whether people can be punished for refusing to identify themselves. The court took up the appeal of a Nevada cattle rancher who was arrested after he told a deputy that he had done nothing wrong and didn't have to reveal his name or show an ID during an encounter on a rural highway four years ago. Larry "Dudley" Hiibel, 59, was prosecuted, based on his silence, and finds himself at the center of a major privacy rights battle. "I would do it all over again," Hiibel, dressed in cowboy hat, boots and a bolo tie, said outside the court. "That's one of our fundamental rights as American citizens, to remain silent." The case will clarify police powers in the post-Sept. 11 era, determining if officials can demand to see identification whenever they deem it necessary. Nevada senior deputy attorney general Conrad Hafen told justices that "identifying yourself is a neutral act" that helps police in their investigations and doesn't - by itself - incriminate anyone. But if that is allowed, several justices asked, what will be next? A fingerprint? Telephone number? E-mail address? What about a national identification card? "The government could require name tags, color codes," Hiibel's lawyer, Robert Dolan, told the court. At the heart of the case is an intersection of the Fourth Amendment, which protects people from unreasonable searches, and the Fifth Amendment right to remain silent. Hiibel claims both of those rights were violated. Justice Antonin Scalia, however, expressed doubts. He said officers faced with suspicious people need authority to get the facts. "I cannot imagine any responsible citizen would have objected to giving the name," Scalia said. Justices are revisiting their 1968 decision that said police may briefly detain someone on reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing, without the stronger standard of probable cause, to get more information. Nevada argues that during such brief detentions, known as Terry stops after the 1968 ruling, people should be required to answer questions about their identities. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor pointed out the court never has given police the authority to demand someone's identification, without probable cause they have done something wrong. But she also acknowledged police might want to run someone's name through computers to check for a criminal history. The encounter in this case, which was videotaped, shows Hiibel by a pickup truck parked off a road near Winnemucca, Nev., on May 21, 2000. An officer, called to the scene because of a complaint about arguing between Hiibel and his daughter in the truck, asked Hiibel 11 times for his identification or his name. Hiibel refused, at one point saying, "If you've got something take me to jail" and "I don't want to talk. I've done nothing. I've broken no laws." Hiibel never acts in a threatening manner and cooperates when handcuffed. His daughter was thrown to the ground and arrested, Hiibel's lawyer told justices. Hiibel was convicted of a misdemeanor charge of resisting arrest. He was fined $250. Nevada is supported by the Bush administration and a criminal justice group. Organizations backing Hiibel include the American Civil Liberties Union, the Cato Institute, privacy groups and advocates for the homeless. Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said if Hiibel loses, the government will be free to use its extensive data bases to keep tabs on people. "A name is now no longer a simple identifier; it is the key to a vast, cross-referenced system of public and private databases, which lay bare the most intimate features of an individual's life," Rotenberg told the court in a filing. The case is Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of the state of Nevada, 03-5554. --- On the Net: Supreme Court: http://www.supremecourtus.gov/ The arrest video can be seen at this site: http://papersplease.org/hiibel/video.html ---------------------------------------------------------- Court: No Right to Keep Name From Police Jun 21, 10:57 PM (ET) By GINA HOLLAND WASHINGTON (AP) - A sharply divided Supreme Court ruled Monday that people who refuse to give their names to police can be arrested, even if they've done nothing wrong. The court previously had said police may briefly detain people they suspect of wrongdoing, without any proof. But until now, the justices had never held that during those encounters a person must reveal their identity. The court's 5-4 decision upholds laws in at least 21 states giving police the right to ask people their name and jail those who don't cooperate. Law enforcement officials say identification requests are a routine part of detective work. Privacy advocates say the decision gives police too much power. Once officers have a name, they can use computer databases to learn all kinds of personal information about the person. The loser in Monday's decision was Nevada cattle rancher Larry "Dudley" Hiibel, who was arrested and convicted of a misdemeanor after he told a deputy that he didn't have to give out his name or show an ID. The encounter happened after someone called police to report arguing between Hiibel and his daughter in a truck parked along a road. An officer asked him 11 times for his identification or his name. Hiibel repeatedly refused, at one point saying, "If you've got something, take me to jail" and "I don't want to talk. I've done nothing. I've broken no laws." In fighting the arrest, Hiibel became an unlikely constitutional privacy rights crusader. He wore a cowboy hat, boots and a bolo tie to the court this year when justices heard arguments in his appeal. "A Nevada cowboy courageously fought for his right to be left alone, but lost," said his attorney, Harriet Cummings. The court ruled that forcing someone to give police their name does not violate their Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable searches. The court also said name requests do not violate the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, except in rare cases. "One's identity is, by definition, unique; yet it is, in another sense, a universal characteristic. Answering a request to disclose a name is likely to be so insignificant in the scheme of things as to be incriminating only in unusual circumstances," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority. The ruling stopped short of allowing police to demand identification, like driver's licenses, but Justice John Paul Stevens said requiring people to divulge their name still goes too far. "A name can provide the key to a broad array of information about the person, particularly in the hands of a police officer with access to a range of law enforcement databases," he wrote in a dissent. Justices David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer also disagreed with the ruling. Crime-fighting and justice groups had argued that a ruling the other way would have protected terrorists and encouraged people to refuse to cooperate with police. "The constant danger of renewed terrorist activity places enormous pressure on law enforcement to identify suspected terrorists before they strike," said Charles Hobson, an attorney with the Sacramento-based Criminal Justice Legal Foundation. But Tim Lynch, an attorney with the libertarian-oriented think tank Cato Institute, said the court "ruled that the government can turn a person's silence into a criminal offense." "Ordinary Americans will be hopelessly confused about when they can assert their right to remain silent without being jailed like Mr. Hiibel," said Lynch, who expects the ruling will lead more cities and states, and possibly Congress, to consider laws like the one in Nevada. Justices had been told that at least 20 states have similar laws to the Nevada statute: Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, and Wisconsin. The ruling was a follow up to a 1968 decision that said police may briefly detain someone on reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing, without the stronger standard of probable cause, to get more information. Justices said that during such brief detentions, known as Terry stops after the 1968 ruling, people must answer questions about their identities. Marc Rotenberg, head of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said America is different 36 years after the Terry decision. "In a modern era, when the police get your identification, they are getting an extraordinary look at your private life." The case is Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of the state of Nevada, 03-5554. --- On the Net: The ruling: http://wid.ap.org/documents/scotus/040621hiibel.pdf The arrest video can be seen at this site: http://papersplease.org/hiibel/video.html ------------------------------------------------------------------ Logan troopers to get roving database access Critics see threat to privacy rights in antiterrorism move By Keith Reed, Globe Staff | June 22, 2004 State troopers at Logan International Airport will have instant access to a wealth of personal information on nearly every person who passes through the airport, from Social Security numbers to names of former roommates. All that information will be at the fingertips of troopers at Logan, under a deal between the Massachusetts State Police and LocatePlus Holdings Corp., a Beverly company that collects public records about individuals and rents access to the information to law enforcement agencies. Officers in Troop F, the State Police unit at Logan, are getting wireless BlackBerry devices linked to LocatePlus's database that includes 7 billion records containing information on 98 percent of the adults in the United States. That could include anything from unlisted phone numbers to names on a lease. When a trooper stops a person acting suspiciously at the airport, he could enter that person's name into the device, which would search for information about his or her identity, past associations, and activities. State Police and LocatePlus officials said yesterday that giving police access to personal information on people they stop at the airport could prove critical in identifying potential terrorist suspects or thwarting other crimes. For example, since the database lists previous addresses and names on a lease, such information can help an officer determine whether someone lived or otherwise associated with alleged terrorists. "A name, that's all he needs," said LocatePlus chief executive Jon Latorella. "He can find out who you lived with, where you lived, anything about you. We have every unlisted phone number in the country. Our stuff is instant, instead of having to wait until after the fact of a bombing." It's that instant access to personal information that peeves privacy advocates, who argue the program will infringe upon rights and could lead to abuses or even false identification of people as criminals or terrorists. "This involves mass scrutiny of the lives and activities of innocent people, a serious invasion of privacy and a violation of the core democratic principle that the government should not be permitted to violate a person's privacy, unless it has a reason to believe that he or she is involved in wrongdoing," said Carol Rose, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts. Rose said that police should set limits on how the information will be used and conduct audits of its uses. "Technology by itself does not make us any safer," she added. State Police said yesterday that whether to use the devices for background checks on individuals would be at the discretion of each trooper. Still, the police said, there will be little room for abuse of the system because all of the information contained in the database is culled from public records that police and even ordinary citizens could search on their own. "It's nothing we don't have access to already," said Lieutenant Thomas Coffey. "Instead of me having to go down to the registry of deeds in a particular county, I can now access this information via a BlackBerry," he added. "It's very critical because timely information is important to us, in order to provide a safer environment." LocatePlus said the company will monitor every time the system is used and can lock individual BlackBerry devices out of its database if it suspects abuses. State Police at Logan have been testing the BlackBerry devices with LocatePlus data since last year. Many troopers, including those at the airport, already carry hand-held computers that are tied into various law enforcement databases. Those databases allow an officer to check, for example, whether there are outstanding warrants for a person or he is on the US Justice Department's terrorism watch list. But information that could tie individuals to crimes or to terrorists -- such as whether a former roommate is a suspected terrorist -- might be missing from law enforcement databases. For example, if a trooper finds an abandoned cellphone, he could search immediately in LocatePlus's database for information on the individuals whose telephone numbers are stored in the phone. Gathering such information under normal circumstances would take several steps and more time. Each of the 147 troopers assigned to Troop F will get a BlackBerry with LocatePlus access, said Phil Orlandella, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Port Authority, which owns and operates Logan. Latorella said the State Police will pay $99 per unit per month for the computers and database access under a 12-month contract. LocatePlus has 70 employees and pulled in $3.4 million in revenue last year, Latorella said. The company, founded in 1993, expects to make its first profit on projected sales of $6.5 million this year. Keith Reed can be reached at reed@globe.com.