Had I actually been carrying contraband, no doubt I would have been more particular about closely adhering to traffic laws. However, given how easy it is for police to gin up a pretext from one of the <a href="http://radgeek.com/gt/2008/06/09/10000_ways/">10,000 or so</a> excuses they have at their disposal, I think that reminding people of police-state tactics, advising them not to cooperate with police, advising them not to talk with police, and advising them not to consent to any searches, are all probably more useful pieces of counsel than telling them that being more law-abiding will somehow keep them safe from invasive police tactics.

I might have; no doubt I also would have been able to avoid it by not taking the trip at all, etc. But like most people I do have my life to live and, as with most people, sometimes that involves exposing myself to minor legal risks. I'm generally willing to take my chances on that and, whatever I may think of the legal authority that poses those dangers to me, I've got better things to think about; it's not like I spend my time putting up blog posts complaining about speeding tickets that I thought were unfair or anything like that. I do, however, think that, whatever you may think of the propriety or wisdom of driving 7mph over the speed limit, the police's deliberate use of pretext stops and methods of gathering "evidence" which are, demonstrably, either unreliable or else a deliberate fraud, in order to furnish "probable cause" for lengthy and invasive warrantless searches, is maybe a more pressing concern than the legal riskiness of minor speeding. The fact that there is nothing unusual in what happened to me -- this kind of thing happens to people all the time -- should tell you something about how secure we are in our persons and effects in everyday life, and about the state of "due process" that the statist legal system so proudly claims to insist on.

I might have; no doubt I also would have been able to avoid it by not taking the trip at all, etc. But like most people I do have my life to live and, as with most people, sometimes that involves exposing myself to minor legal risks. I'm generally willing to take my chances on that and, whatever I may think of the legal authority that poses those dangers to me, I've got better things to think about; it's not like I spend my time putting up blog posts complaining about speeding tickets that I thought were unfair or anything like that. I do, however, think that, whatever you may think of the propriety or wisdom of driving 7mph over the speed limit, the police's deliberate use of pretext stops and methods of gathering "evidence" which are, demonstrably, either unreliable or else a deliberate fraud, in order to furnish "probable cause" for lengthy and invasive warrantless searches, is maybe a more pressing concern than the legal riskiness of minor speeding. The fact that there is nothing unusual in what happened to me -- this kind of thing happens to people all the time -- should tell you something about how secure we are in our persons and effects in everyday life, and about the state of "due process" that the statist legal system so proudly claims to insist on.