This week the Supreme Court will take up the case of a man convicted for a rather minor count of marijuana possession. How they eventually decide the case will determine whether or not the Court continues to gut the Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizures.

The case is pretty straightforward. Charles McArthur’s estranged wife called police to wait outside the trailer they shared while she moved her stuff out. After her final trip she told police that McArthur had a stash of marijuana in the house. He told police he didn’t, and they decided to get a warrant to search the trailer.

It’s what they did in the two hours it took to get the warrant that is at issue — they refused to allow McArthur to go back into his trailer. The police said they had to do so or McArthur would have destroyed the evidence; a point which even McArthur concedes. On the other hand as several appeals courts have ruled, this is a pretty clear case of an illegal search and seizure. By preventing McArthur from re-entering his home before searching it, they effectively seized it without a warrant.

The fact that the Supreme Court agreed to consider the case after several appeals courts excluded the seized marijuana suggests that it is likely they might overturn that exclusion. This Court has already twisted the Fourth Amendment into so many knots that there’s very little real protection anymore from a police officer intent on searching your property or person.

The police chief’s claims about how the severity of the case outline how far the drug war has gone in undermining the basic protections of citizens from the state. Illinois’ Moultire County State’s Attorney Tim Willis notes that, “They [police] could have kicked the door down. They didn’t do that. If the Supreme Court rules against us generally … people are going to get away with crimes.”

Kick the door in to seize a little marijuana? When did that sort of reaction make sense. The way the police talk, they had to treat McArthur the same way they might treat someone who said he had a bomb set to go off in 5 minutes hidden somewhere in his trailer or if they hard heard gunshots coming from his place. Come on, the guy just had some marijuana.

Instead of going along with Willis and saying “they could have kicked the door down,” we need to seriously re-evaluate if we really want police going around kicking down doors to get at evidence of non-violent drug offenses. Surely police in Illinois have better things to do than bully pot smokers in trailer parks.

Source:

Pot bust spurs Supreme Court hearing on search and seizure. The Associated Press, October 31, 2000.

According to CNN, some French Christian leaders are urging people in that nation not to celebrate Halloween claiming, among other things, that it is Satanist and detracts from the Catholic All Saints Festival. The only problem there is that the Roman Catholic Church originally created All Saints Day to get people to stop celebrating a similar pagan festival for the dead. The whole idea, whether in a secular Halloween party or a religious All Saints Day festival is of pagan origins through and through.

The Halloween experience with costumes, etc., however, is considered largely American, though there are some who think that things like “trick or treating” might have earlier antecedents in British culture (but really, could there possibly be anything more American than dressing up in a costume and demanding that people reward you with candy for it? Ideas like that are what made the United States a great country!)

Jon Udell has another article raving about Groove.

When you join a Groove shared space, you get all the stuff, and it looks the same to you as it looks to everybody else. It’s no more effort to invite a colleague behind a foreign corporate firewall than it is to invite a colleague in the next cubicle. And here’s the kicker: the shared space formed in this spontaneous way is secure. Really, really secure, both on the wire, and on every hard disk to which it synchronizes.

Udell goes on to contrast the Web/e-mail/news system of collaboration that he outlined in Practical Internet Groupware with a system like Lotus Notes that did much the same thing except that it was extremely expensive (I’ve worked at places where the IT department and users fell in love with Notes, but the price made implementing it a nonstarter). Among other things Udell likes Groove because like Notes its an integrated solution that doesn’t feel “cobbled together” and unlike Notes is basically free (with Groove apparently making its money by selling server space for clients who need it).

Okay, the security model Groove has is very nice — if you’ve got high security needs it seems to solve them pretty seamlessly. But for those without such high security needs I think Udell sells his original “cobbled” solution a bit short. the first thing that hit me after firing up Groove was that it looked great but do I really want to convince my friends and coworkers to download, install and learn to use yet another application?

The e-mail/web browsers combination are not just ubiquitous, but so is knowledge of how to use them. Not that Groove was particularly difficult to use (in fact its interface was great), but I’m really to the point of where if it’s not available via e-mail and/or web browser I’m really not interested.

I was very impressed by the latest version of Qualcomm’s Eudora, which I use for e-mail, which includes automatic file synchronization which Qualcomm calls the Eudora Sharing Protocol. The press release describes a possible use for the feature,

Here are some examples of how ESP can be used
A group of reporters might all be working on a large feature with multiple sidebars. With ESP, whenever any member of the group checks his Large Feature folder, he or she will see what other members of the group have written (their notes, etc.) and saved to the folder on their hard drives. When the editor edits the copy as it comes in and pulls the story together, all members of the team will have the same version of the feature in that folder on their hard drives.

Okay, first it’s pretty limited functionality, and second I don’t want to force the rest of the world which seems to be enchanted with Outlook to switch to Eudora, but I think Qualcomm’s on the right track: I don’t really want an entirely knew application, what I want are some open protocols and organizing applications to let me do more sophisticated collaboration with the tools I’ve got.

If Groove becomes as ubiquitous as the browser, at least with the people I want to collaborate with, I might end up using it but I’d still prefer to stick with just my e-mail client and browser.

About a year ago I signed up several of my smaller sites to carry ad banners served up by Teknosurf which later became Advertising.Com. I was kind of surprised they were even interested since the page views for the three sites couldn’t have been over 1,500 per day combined, even on very good days.

Finally they came to their senses and earlier this month sent me a polite e-mail saying that these three sites didn’t generate enough page views and if they weren’t over a certain level by the end of October they would be dropped (and there’s now way I was going to get where they wanted by then end of October — next October probably, but not this year).

So after Tuesday, no more of their ads on those three sites. What impressed me, however, was they’re going to pay me for any revenue on any of the sites that was over $5 cumulative. Believe me when you’re dealing with ad companies who specialize in placing banner ads on smaller sites, that sort of commitment is pretty rare. I’ve run across quite a few people who never got paid a single dime for running hundreds of thousands of banner ads (and the company never had any intent on paying up).

In fact at every point along the way the Advertising.Com people have been nothing but professional and I wouldn’t hestitate to recommend them to anyone (since my page view level on those sites were so low, however, I have no idea how good they are at selling targeted ads as opposed to low paying run of network fare).

The other day I ordered some books from Amazon.Com — mainly because the local stores take forever to order books from some small publishers through their distributors, while Amazon.Com usually ships them out to me in less than 48 hours.

For the most part, I find the discount Amazon offers is usually offset by the shipping and handling charge so mainly I just get the books I want faster. But that could change since Michigan is one of several states trying to find ways to collect sales tax on such purchases.

According to this PostNet story, Kansas, Michigan, North Carolina and Wisconsin, are trying to voluntarily persuade online merchants to add a sales tax to the credit cards of consumers from those states.

The new software would be given to Internet retailers who ask the state for it. The software calculates the tax due and charges consumers’ credit cards when they make an online purchase. The retailer turns the tax over to the vendor, who would remit it to the proper state.

Ugh. The first time I see a sales text on my Amazon order is the first time I switch to an alternative retailer that doesn’t go around asking state governments how best it can raise the cost to consumers of buying books.

And Michigan has a relatively liberal sales tax policy. I was flabbergasted when I visited Illinois to be charged a sales tax on grocery items I bought there. Are Illinois legislators really that insane? Could there be anything more stupid than a tax on food?

I hope most Internet retailers will just say not to becoming tax agents for states.

In Michigan, where I live, the group opposed to a voucher initiative that will be voted on November 7th is saturating local radio and television stations with ads denouncing the voucher proposal. According to the anti-voucher ads, vouchers will destroy education in Michigan, cause taxes to skyrocket, and any number of other horrible problems. The ads are very slick and, if the polls are any guide, very effective — support for the voucher plan is now stuck at around 30 percent.

One of the ads went too far for several Michigan TV stations who recently pulled the ad. The ad showed a little girl in a wheelchair with an accompanying voiceover that said, “Angelica will not benefit from Proposal 1′s exclusive private school vouchers because private schools are allowed to reject disabled students like Angelica.”

In fact, Michigan’s Persons With Disabilities Civil Rights Act — enacted in 1976 — makes it illegal for private schools to discriminate against people based solely on their disabilities.

This is pretty typical of the campaign the anti-voucher forces are running. It’s too bad that the Michigan Education Association and others haven’t put as much energy into teaching kids to read and not drop out as they have into defeating the voucher proposal.

Anti-voucher ad with disabled girl pulled. Laura Potts, The Detroit Free Press, October 26, 2000.

Writing for MP3Newswire, Richard Menta claims that Radiohead’s recent debut at #1 is due in large part to the album being available on Napster 3 months before it was scheduled to be released. According to Menta this sort of music never shows up on Billboard charts usually.

Sure, that’s why Nirvana had such success with their first major label release — because it was on Napster first (oops–no Napster? How did they ever sell CDs in the old days). In fact Radiohead’s debut is due to the immense publicist surrounding the album. I’ve never heard a Radiohead song or care about the group’s music, but even I’ve run across publicity for their latest album.

Besides the real argument against Napster is its long-term effects. Of course you have to out and by the CD now. Why? Because portable MP3 players are still too expensive and/or lack important features. Unless you’ve got a lot of money and/or patience, it’s not very easy to play MP3s outside of the computer environment.

MP3 devices are getting better, however, and it won’t be long before relatively cheap, easy to use portable devices arrive — possibly as soon as Christmas 2001. Once that happens, why buy CDs if the songs are available on Napster and can be taken anywhere with the same versatility as the compact disc?

The first time I paid for software online and downloaded the program to my hard drive rather than go to a store or wait for it to arrive via UPS, I thought it was an interesting novelty. Today I pretty much consider it a necessity.

I ran across a program today that I really wanted and was all set to pony up $60 for, only to realize I’d have to pay an additional shipping and handling fee and wait several days. Yuck. I hate waiting. I hate waiting so much that I left the company’s web site without placing an order.

There is some software that I need so badly I’ll put up with waiting for it to arrive by snail mail (or, as with some games, the file size is simply too large to accomodate downloading), but if it’s something I want but could probably live without, having to wait for UPS or whatever is typically a deal breaker.