The general population need to stop recognizing the authority and legitimacy these thugs try to claim for themselves.
I hope we the average people can find ways to put aside all of our petty differences to unite under peaceful opposition to the tyrants and security states and practice civil disobedience by opting out of the liberty and dignity depriving practices like these en mass.
I agree that peaceful opposition is the way. I’m just confused by your statement of opting out. How exactly do you envision people “opting out” of the sociopolitical structures they reside in like this?
The only way to opt out of this searching is to not cross US national borders with a cell phone or other portable computing device. If you politely refuse to hand over your device at a crossing when asked they would either not allow you to cross or just hold you until they were ready to deny you crossing.
Assuming you need to cross, your only option would be to mail your device across the border separately from yourself moving across, and hope there isn’t some law allowing search of these devices in mail. That would sidestep the issue, but it wouldn’t do anything to stop the practice unless a majority of people did that practice.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I won’t sugarcoat it and pretend it would be easy to change the system. It took a long time to get to the state it is in now and it will likely take a long time to roll it back if it is possible. I also don’t profess to have all the answers, or that what I’m about to write is all that’s needed. It’s just the beginning of trying new approaches with different ideas and ideals, and changing hearts and minds so we can move back in that more positive direction.
You’ve hit on a few ways to opt-out already in your reply. One is to not take devices across boarders if you can prevent it. Or to take wiped, empty, dummy or burner devices without sensitive personal info on them. Alternatively as you mentioned, they could be shipped or transported separately. This is a workaround that does not target the enforcement practices in any real way though as you rightly pointed out. Another is to simply not travel over boarders, but that’s self-limiting your freedom to travel and kind of handcuffing yourself. It also does not solve the problem if you truly need to be on the other side of one.
You hit on what I think is truly the necessary first step in your last sentence. It will take a critical mass of people caring about things like this and taking steps to opt out and, most importantly, to support others who wish to opt-out as well.
As it stands now, people in uniforms which are supposed to convey special priviledge and authority about their actions that are extraordinary and not afforded to the average citizen enforce these unjust searches and seizures. They are backed by state apparatus’ that target those very individuals and groups they draw their funding and supposed consent from. The crowd of average people largely either believes that when these goons target an individual from amongst them and pick them off from the herd that this individual targeted “must have done something wrong”, or those other average people in the herd are too scared to stand up and speak up lest they be targeted as well. This should not be the default assumption. We should encourage people to practice the concept of innocent until proven guilty in the court of public opinion and perception, not just in the legal system.
In short, the mentality of how we all think about things has to change. Most movements that enact change do not need anywhere near 100% support. Or even a simple majority. There is a lot of argument about what percentage of people need to be engaged or mobilized to enact successful change, but most of the things I’ve read seem to show that 15% or less of a given population that is organized and motivated for a cause can bring about real lasting change as even a minority movement.
For instance, if 15% of people who believed they were being prosecuted for victimless crimes chose not to take plea bargains but took their cases to jury trials it would freeze most already overwhelmed criminal justice systems and courts. The legal system and courts wouldn’t have the funding, staffing or capacity to keep up with the deluge, and eventually the system would break and be forced to focus only on the serious and heinous crimes with real victims, so the problem would solve itself. This could turn into a much larger discussion on it’s own, so I only use it here as a simple illustration of how it might change peacefully without the need for violence or slow bureaucratic regulatory and policy change under the right conditions. Simply find weak spots and collectively throw a monkey wrench into them.
I’d rather see enough people support one another and make enough noise and gum up the works of systems that aren’t working in their collective interests so that those systems will either change by choice/necessity or simply breakdown. I hope to see lots of things start to move in better directions by sheer non-compliance of those impacted who can agree they aren’t happy with the direction it’s going now. This will not happen overnight, but overnight change is typically only achieved by violent revolution. I have not and do not call for this, and it’s not the way I want to see things play out. Which is why I’m advocating for slowly beginning to walk things back in the other direction toward individual freedom and liberty and respect for individual rights now. That has to be a spark ignited in each person and spread to others before we will get anywhere peacefully.
