Drugs, Bombs, and the Erosion of Rights

Abstract

David K. Shipler’s book The Rights of the People: How Our Search for Safety Invades Our Liberties applies a common analysis to two very different issues. The first, warrantless searches in the fight against illegal guns and drugs, largely affects minority residents in large cities, and involves strikingly intrusive physical inspections that might be considered an assault in a different context. The second, internet and telephone data-gathering for national security purposes, casts a much broader net and presents a very different type of intrusion. In this book review, Mark Osler compares these two very different problems and the societal implications they present.

Keywords: criminal law, search and seizure, warrantless searches, national security, NSA, surveillance