December 4, 2000

Warantless Arrests for Minor Offenses Face Challenge
Anonymous Online Criticism Protected
Dot-Com Entrepreneurs Elected to Dot-Gov

Warantless Arrests for Minor Offenses Face Challenge

In 1997, Gail Atwater was arrested, handcuffed and locked in a jail cell because she and her two children weren't wearing seat belts in the family pickup truck. That family drive has become a challenge of the power of police. The Supreme Court will hear arguments today from lawyers for Atwater and the city of Lago Vista on whether her arrest violated the Constitution's Fourth Amendment, which bans unreasonable arrests and searches, according to the Associated Press.

"Our lives would have been much better if we would have just swallowed it," Atwater said. "We're not anti-cop ... (but) this is about reining the cops in and how far cops can intrude in our lives."

The Cato Institute filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in the case. In it, Timothy Lynch and Jarett Decker tell the Court that it "should draw on the common law principles at the core of the Fourth Amendment by recognizing the time-honored prohibition of warantless arrests for minor offenses not involving a breach of the peace."

Anonymous Online Criticism Protected

Two Internet users have successfully challenged a New Jersey company's efforts to unmask their identities for a defamation lawsuit, and free-speech advocates consider this ruling a major victory in protecting authors of unflattering online messages, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The case appears to be the first time anonymous posters have succeeded in blocking a company's request for a subpoena that would have forced a message-board operator, in this instance, Yahoo! Inc., to turn over information that would divulge their identities.

In "Nameless in Cyberspace," Jonathan D. Wallace makes the case that proposals to limit anonymous communications on the Internet would violate free speech rights and demonstrates that anonymous and pseudonymous speech played a vital role in the founding of this country.

Dot-Com Entrepreneurs Elected to Dot-Gov

The 2000 election will be remembered not only as the closest presidential race in a century but also as one in which techies went from being entrepreneurs to politicians, according to CNET News.

Darrell Issa, a Republican from Vista, Calif., near San Diego, was elected to the House of Representatives earlier this month. Issa also is the chairman of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) and the founder of a multimillion-dollar electronics business.

Several hundred miles up the Pacific Coast, Maria Cantwell has been elected to the U.S. Senate, assuming she survives a recount scheduled to end Friday. A Democrat and former one-term member of the House, Cantwell funded her campaign with money earned as an executive at RealNetworks.

Congress currently comprises former actors, surgeons, veterinarians, bankers, homemakers, ranchers and broadcasters as well as enough attorneys to mount a Florida vote challenge. But this election is believed to be the first in which technology executives -- entrepreneurs who have grown a business from the ground up -- will be serving.

High-tech entrepreneurs in Congress could be a blessing or a curse. In "Death of Politics?" Cato President Ed Crane writes that citizen legislatures "won't consider themselves 'lawmakers' but true representatives. They will bring their own perspective, a product of living in the real world, to bear on issues of national policy. And that is reason for the special interests and those who live off of government largesse to have real concern." In "Why Silicon Valley Should Not Normalize Relations With Washington, D.C.," T.J. Rodgers shows how "the collectivist notion that drives policymaking in Washington is the irrevocable enemy of high-technology capitalism and the wealth creation process."

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